Many believe that it is impossible to force people to make good choices. The concept of Pavlovian conditioning, however, begs to differ. The process is most commonly explained through a researcher who trained his dog to salivate at the sound of a bell by rewarding it with food every time the dog heard one. Such conditioning can be applied to humans, although this method can be extreme. Two MIT doctoral candidates have deemed wasting 50 hour a week on Facebook extreme enough.
Robtert R. Morris and Dan McDuff have invented a way for people to curb their online distraction habits by allowing them to self-inflict a little punishing damage via their "Pavlov Poke," a new keyboard accessory that shocks users who overindulge themselves online, according to Discovery News.
"It monitors application usage and if you spend to much time on a particular website or application it will give you a shock," McDuff said in a promotional video, seen below. "The shock is unpleasant but not dangerous."
"Of course this is meant to be somewhat of a joke," Morris added. "We just wanted to illustrate the lengths we've taken to reduce our own online habits."
The system uses a Mac UI inspector to monitor application usage and a processing code that routes on-screen alert signals to an Arduino board, which will activate a relay, which results in a shock for the person touching it.
The two have used humor to curb their Facebook additctions before. They created a version of the system previously by posting job listings on Amazon's Mechanical Turk that paid strangers $1.40 simply to call them and scold them for wasting time on Facebook.
It's unclear what effect the Pavlovian conditioning will have on their distraction time online in the long run, but for the short term, it's certainly a great way to let someone know they've been unproductive for an unacceptable amount of time.
Tell us what you think? Could you use the Pavlov Poke or are you fine with the amount of time you spend on Facebook? Would this be a weird thing to share with your friends on Facebook?
