Technologies With Unintended Consequences
Explore how everyday digital tools can create unexpected problems, from interrupted attention to hidden privacy risks.
Preview
Questions with solutions-
1. Escolha a resposta correta.
What trade-off does this tool create?
A messaging app helps colleagues get quick answers. However, its constant alerts repeatedly interrupt work that requires sustained concentration.
- Faster replies necessarily mean fewer interruptions.
- Easier communication can come at the expense of focused attention.
- Shorter conversations prevent notifications from becoming distracting.
- Immediate contact removes the need for uninterrupted work.
Consider the difference between being reachable and being able to concentrate.
Show solution
- Easier communication can come at the expense of focused attention.
A tool can improve individual exchanges while making longer periods of concentration harder to protect.
-
2. Preencha a lacuna.
What protection is missing from this arrangement?
A cloud folder mirrors changes, including deletions, across every connected device. It keeps no earlier versions or separate copies, so synchronization here is not the same as ___.
- automatic updating
- cross-device access
- a recoverable backup
- replication of changes
What would remain available after an accidental deletion?
Show solution
A cloud folder mirrors changes, including deletions, across every connected device. It keeps no earlier versions or separate copies, so synchronization here is not the same as a recoverable backup.
Synchronization spreads changes; a backup preserves a copy that can be restored when those changes are a mistake.
-
3. Escolha a resposta correta.
What opportunity does this personalization reduce?
A video service recommends topics similar to those a viewer has already watched. Its full catalog stays unchanged, but the viewer's recommendation page gradually becomes less varied.
- The opportunity to encounter unfamiliar topics
- The opportunity to access videos remaining in the full catalog
- The opportunity to receive recommendations related to previous viewing
- The opportunity to see familiar topics on the recommendation page
Distinguish what remains available from what is made visible.
Show solution
- The opportunity to encounter unfamiliar topics
Personalization can narrow exposure without removing anything from the underlying collection.
-
4. Escolha a resposta correta.
What has this measure of success overlooked?
A navigation system directs drivers through residential streets to shorten their trips. Residents experience more traffic noise, but the system measures success only by drivers' travel times.
- Moving cars off main roads necessarily reduces the number of cars.
- Shorter trips benefit everyone along the recommended route.
- Travel-time savings already account for residents' well-being.
- A benefit for drivers can impose a cost on people outside the calculation.
Whose experience is absent from the system's chosen metric?
Show solution
- A benefit for drivers can impose a cost on people outside the calculation.
Optimization can shift costs onto people who do not use the tool and have no say in its decisions.
-
5. Escolha a resposta correta.
Which design assumption creates the new barrier?
A public office replaces telephone booking with an online-only appointment system. Booking becomes more convenient for connected residents, while people without internet access lose their previous route to the service.
- Traveling to an office can take time.
- Everyone who needs the service can get online.
- Appointments need to be arranged in advance.
- Some residents prefer booking outside office hours.
Which capability has become a condition of access?
Show solution
- Everyone who needs the service can get online.
A service can become easier for many people while excluding others if its new requirements are treated as universal.
-
6. Preencha a lacuna.
How does increased use change the overall outcome?
A photo service compresses each image into a smaller file. Users respond by saving so many more images that total storage use rises. The expected overall savings are ___.
- preserved by a decline in user activity
- lost because each individual file becomes larger
- outweighed by growth in the number of stored images
- guaranteed by the smaller size of each file
Consider both the resources needed per item and the total number of items.
Show solution
A photo service compresses each image into a smaller file. Users respond by saving so many more images that total storage use rises. The expected overall savings are outweighed by growth in the number of stored images.
This is a rebound effect: efficiency makes greater use easier, and that extra use can outweigh the savings.
-
7. Escolha a resposta correta.
What privacy weakness does this reveal?
Names are removed from a location dataset. Nevertheless, a researcher identifies one person by matching their regular nighttime location with a publicly listed home address.
- Location patterns can identify someone even when their name is absent.
- Removing names prevents records from being linked to outside information.
- A publicly listed address makes the resident's movements public information too.
- Repeated location records reveal less than a single isolated location.
Removing a direct identifier does not remove every possible connection.
Show solution
- Location patterns can identify someone even when their name is absent.
Privacy depends partly on what information can be linked across sources, not merely on whether names are included.
-
8. Escolha a resposta correta.
Which longer-term risk does this illustrate?
A help desk automates routine requests. Staff increasingly accept the software's suggestions without exercising independent judgment. When an unusual case falls outside the tool's capabilities, they struggle to resolve it.
- Successful automation ensures that exceptional cases stop occurring.
- The staff's difficulty shows that routine requests have become more complex.
- Independent judgment becomes unnecessary whenever routine work is automated.
- Automating routine work can weaken the skills needed when automation falls short.
Think about abilities that depend on regular practice.
Show solution
- Automating routine work can weaken the skills needed when automation falls short.
Automation can reduce opportunities to maintain expertise, even while leaving people responsible for the hardest exceptions.
-
9. Escolha a resposta correta.
What behavior does this ranking system inadvertently reward?
A platform promotes posts according to their comment counts. Heated disputes generate repeated replies, while calm, useful posts receive fewer. The ranking system does not measure usefulness or satisfaction.
- Resolving disagreements with as few replies as possible
- Provoking disputes that keep people replying
- Providing useful information even when nobody responds
- Helping users leave once their needs have been met
What produces the quantity that the system rewards?
Show solution
- Provoking disputes that keep people replying
A convenient measure of engagement can reward behavior that undermines the quality of the experience it is meant to improve.
-
10. Escolha a resposta correta.
Which change most directly addresses this design problem?
A sharing tool creates separate copies of posts. When an author corrects a factual error, those copies retain the outdated wording. People encountering a reshared copy have no indication that a correction exists.
- Allow resharing only after a post has received many reactions.
- Require users to add a personal comment whenever they reshare a post.
- Link reshared copies to the source so later corrections appear on them.
- Display the total number of reshares beside each separate copy.
The missing connection is between distributed copies and later changes to their source.
Show solution
- Link reshared copies to the source so later corrections appear on them.
Making information easy to spread is only half the challenge; corrections also need a way to reach the same audience.