Persuasive Technology

technology (such as tracking the location of a package you’ve sent or compar-

ing a partial fingerprint with the thousands of criminal fingerprints on file).

When acting as tools, computers can influence and motivate people in spe-

cific ways. I’ll return to this topic after explaining the next two corners of the

functional triad.

Computers as Media

Computers also function as media—a role that has grown in recent years as

processing power has increased and networking has become common. There

are two categories of computers as media: symbolic and sensory. Computers

function as symbolic media when they use symbols to convey information (for

example, text, ...