In Bridging the gap between humans and computers Heather Kelly takes a look at some recent ethnographic research on our relationship with technology. It’s full of interesting stories like this one:

In one experiment, Ju’s group rigged automatic doors to open in different ways: Some would open slowly, then pause before fully opening; others would immediately jerk all the way open. The people walking by the doors assigned them different levels of intelligence, and thought the doors that opened in two steps just seemed smarter.

It turned out that adding the pause gave illusion of forethought, even though it was just an extra programming step. People thought the door was more intelligent because it appeared to think before carrying out an action.

One of my favorite books on this topic is Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. The first half of the book is all about our relationship with high tech “things” — what we find creepy vs. comforting, how different cultures behave differently, etc. Highly recommended.