The Man Who Lied to His Laptop condenses for a popular audience an argument that Nass has been making for at least 15 years: humans do not differentiate between computers and people in their social interactions.

At first blush, this sounds absurd. Everyone knows that it's "just a computer," and of course computers don't have feelings. And yet. Nass has a slew of amusing stories—and, crucially, studies based on those stories—indicating that, no matter what "everyone knows," people act as if the computer secretly cares. For example: In one study, users reviewed a software package, either on the same computer they'd used it on, or on a different computer. Consistently, participants gave the software better ratings when they reviewed in on the same computer—as if they didn't want the computer to feel bad. What's more, Nass notes, "every one of the participants insisted that she or he would never bother being polite to a computer" (7).

Nass found that users given completely random praise by a computer program liked it more than the same program without praise, even though they knew in advance the praise was meaningless. In fact, they liked it as much as the same program, if they were told the praise was accurate. (In other words, flattery was as well received as praise, and both were preferred to no positive comments.) Again, when questioned about the results, users angrily denied any difference at all in their reactions.

Though the software will sync information between two computers, highlights and notes created in NOOKStudy won't sync to the Nook, nor will highlights and notes created on the Nook sync to NOOKStudy. In fact, NOOKStudy couldn't even bring me to the correct page in the book I'm currently reading. At least the pages in NOOKStudy seem to correspond with the pagination you'd see on the Nook, so finding one's place isn't horrendously difficult, but still. Amazon had this sort of thing figured out with Whispersync some time ago.

A colleague in the faculty is currently researching the opportunities that use of asynchronous discussion forums can offer to leveling the playing field, and providing more equitable opportunities for people to share their thoughts. From what I’ve heard, the results so far are exceptionally promising.