But Reeves and Nass' light-hearted jokiness takes a bleaker turn when they point out that test groups valued praise more from computers that were given male characteristics. Similarly, when women's voices on videotapes were lowered, those watching rated the voice-lowered women as having more drive, willpower, and reasoning skills. Interestingly, the authors avoid the issue of race, but it's easy to see how evoking ethnic, racial, or class stereotypes might have similar effects. It was popular, some years back, to give your computer the startup voices of Hal from 2001 or Darth Vader from Star Wars . The implication was, of course, my computer is a bad-ass alpha male with a scary disposition.
People love to think they've got tough, sexy guys ready to do their bidding.
Maybe that's why Bob didn't work - he just wasn't arousing. The inherent messiness of personality, complete with sexual undertones, will cause computers to evolve in strange directions. Give me some of your brilliant ideas, in Threads. Let's strongarm the cultural landscape, together. Pop's pull-down menu Pick one, then press Go.