In “The UK firm that wants to give big spenders a big shock” (2016), Zoe Kleinman reports the Intelligent Environments, the UK firm, has launched their new platform for a wristband called Pavlock. This platform link the wristband to the user bank account, and gives user a 225 volts electric shock when the users spend money over an agreed limit. It also able to controls the Google Nest, an automatic house temperature control device, by turn down the heater temperature if funds are low in order to save the energy bill. Even though there are no bank has announced that they will offer this gadget to their customer, the Intelligent Environment believes that it would be an advantage for their customer financial well-being.
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My Yes/No question is:
Do you want the shock wristband?
My answer is:
No, I don’t.
First, I think this gadget is unnecessary thing. It doesn’t solve the problem at the root cause. It is very easy for the wristband user to ignore the electric shock if they need to pay for something. For example, a woman spends a lot of money on foods and cloths after she receives her salary, in the end of the month, the money in the account is almost reach the threshold limit, but she have to pay for a doctor. Do you think she still care of the electric shock?
It would be more effective if people know how to manage their financial themselves, one of the reasons is they really don’t know if they have to pay for any emergency cases. For my case, I simply categorize my expenses in to a group such as transportation, foods, and miscellaneous, then record my daily expenses in google doc. Each week, I’ll check whether I over spend money. If I found that I pay too much on unnecessary things, I will be more careful to spend money in the next week.
Last, it’s quite dangerous to link our financial data with many gadgets. There is a chance that those data will be hacked. And I think that we rely on the technology too much, sometimes it doesn’t help us as we expect.
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I find out that this idea about shock wristband is so ridiculous and crap. Do we need such a thing to warn us about spending? We can't even control ourselves to buy only the things we really need, can we?
ReplyDeleteSince,Human being is much more complex and smart than any other species in this planet, we can reach the top of the highest mountain, we dive in the very great deep ocean, and we can even visit the moon. But we can't manage our own expense! Seriously?
For how much longer do you think that we humans will be "much more complex and smart than any other species in this planet," as Fang writes?
DeleteIn fact, I thought that the same deep process that has made us the smartest over the past 4 billion years is also the deep explanation of why we still "can't manage our own expense," as so many of us can't.
I really agree with you, Nuke. if I use the shock wristband to prevent me to use lots of money, perhaps, I will like it in the first time. Yet, if it shock me for many times, I may cancel to use it as it annoy me. Surely, in your life, you sometimes have to spend a lot of money for medicine, travel or school fees. Hence, you might use Nuke's way to manage your money.
ReplyDeleteDangerously, if someone can steal this wrist from you, you will lose lots of money or all of your money in financial institutes. I couldn't agree with you that perhaps, people want to use technologies too much that cause negative ways more than positive ones.
I thought that some of the other ideas stated in Nuke's source were worth noting. First, the company admits that the shock part is a bit of a joke: they don't actually expect it to be taken too seriously. What most interested me is the connection that the company makes with the increasing interconnectedness of our homes and the devices within them.
ReplyDeleteMy ancient air-conditioning, for example, is on its last legs, and I'm thinking of replacing it with a wi-fi enabled update so that my phone can turn it on ten minutes before I get in. Of course, my phone already runs my TV.
Since we write our Source Background sections without looking at our source, which we've read several times in advance to be sure we have a clear idea of the content so that we can pick out the important points for our summaries, whilst skipping the details and unimportant points, it's inevitable that we will miss things. I don't always read your sources, unless I suspect that there might have been accidental copying and pasting that is not in "quotation marks" as it must be.
Thank you Peter, I'll review my source my source background again.
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