Scholar scribe, Matt Kaplan, writes about animals, insects, and technology. The opening keynote speaker at FETC on January 29, 2012, Kaplan says, “predictive texting alters our perception of numbers.” As we text, our brain acquires information, and the more we text, the more links grow in our brains. When “dialing a number, we may not be aware that the number triggers our mind to the letters as well. That’s why there are feel good numbers that we can dial up on our cell phones.” When we dial 5683, we may not be aware that this spells “LOVE”, but it makes us feel good.
Kaplan says that companies use this subtle form of advertising when their telephone number spells the company name or a positive adjective that those calling will relate to the number. In a German study, when volunteers dialed two numbers, one which spelled something positive and one, something negative, participants said they liked the “positive” one better, even though they didn’t know why. This happened only when they “dialed” the numbers, not when they simply read the numbers. As we move more and more into tech use in our schools, we should be aware, according to Lawrence Shapiro, University of Wisconsin, that “technology influences psychology.”
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