Institute For The Future

The Non-Sponsored Moment: Stephen Duncombe Interview

As part of our Future of Persuasion research, we are conducting interviews with scholars, activists, technologists, and other experts who have been thinking deeply about influencing human behavior. This week, I had the privilege of talking with NYU media, culture and politics professor Stephen Dreampolitik Duncombe.

 

The conversation ranged from Aristotle's opinion polling in ancient Greece, to the art of evoking the affective discontent of young Europeans, to planning for mutations in your message. I will be posting some highlights from the interview here at the Future of Persuasion blog, and the full interview will be part of our final report.

 

Dr. Duncombe and I began by talking about some of the new technologies of persuasion, and the role of games for social change. Then I asked him to identify some "old" technologies, technologies that might not be on our radar, but will be very important for persuasion in coming decade. Taking a broad view of technology, Duncombe offered up a very basic social practice, when stripped of an explicit agenda, has been given a new power in today's blended reality:

 

 

 

Gatherings. Physical gatherings. And I’m not thinking of the protest models—the Tea Party march on Washington, or any progressive protest march against X, etc. I’m talking about groups like Improv Everywhere, and these sort of spontaneous “flash mob” kind of gatherings, or temporary autonomous zones, or “train parties” and other things like that. Of course, marketers are already understanding this, and are trying to exploit it as much as possible.

 

One thing that strikes me is the importance of ‘non-instrumentality’ in these gatherings to the action itself. We learned this with Reclaim the Streets—we were having these great parties, and a bunch of us started saying “this is great, but we’ve got to make this more political.” When we started to make it more explicitly political, we started to lose people.

 

So, what people like Improv Everywhere are really trying for in these gatherings or happenings is the sense of wonderment . For example, one Improv Everywhere project is called High-Five Escalator. On this long, dismal escalator ride up from a dreary subway station, they had five people going in the opposite direction holding big signs that said “Hey You”…”Coming Up”…”Give Rob”…”A High Five.” And at the end of the escalator, there’s a sign next to a guy standing there that says “Rob,” and he is there giving everyone a high-five.

 

And when the founder of Improv Everywhere was talking about this, he said “What would have happened if, right after giving Rob a high-five, there was an ad for Dentyne?” All of sudden that magical moment that people were experiencing would be immediately compartmentalized. In fact, you’d feel ripped-off. You’d think “oh, I thought something special was happening, and now I realize it’s only an ad.”

 

And that’s a problem for persuasion: how do you persuade in such as way if you don’t contain that wonderment that happens in these non-instrumental physical gatherings? How do you design an event in such as way as to continue that spontaneity, that wonderment, in a “non-sponsored” life moment, that “non-sponsored” moment of joy?

 

 

 

 

Find out in the final report, and stay tuned for more "magical moments" from the interview.