by Zoë Pollock
Thomas Goetz praises feedback loops. Specifically he's a fan of the ones that gently nudge you into better behaviors, like the speed monitors that show you how fast you're going:
Make [feedback loops] too passive and you’ll lose your audience as the data blurs into the background of everyday life. Make them too intrusive and the data turns into noise, which is easily ignored. Borrowing a concept from cognitive psychology called pre-attentive processing, Rose aims for a sweet spot between these extremes, where the information is delivered unobtrusively but noticeably.
How it applies to health care practices is fascinating:
Conventional wisdom holds that medical information won’t be heeded unless it sets off alarms. Instead of glowing orbs, we’re pummeled with FDA cautions and Surgeon General warnings and front-page reports, all of which serve to heighten our anxiety about our health. This fear-based approach can work—for a while. But fear, it turns out, is a poor catalyst for sustained behavioral change. After all, biologically our fear response girds us for short-term threats. If nothing threatening actually happens, the fear dissipates. If this happens too many times, we end up simply dismissing the alarms.
The Dish 