The Challenges and Dangers of Digital Nudging

The vast majority of our decisions are influenced by irrational and emotional factors. For decades, scientists have been studying so we can better understand how it is possible not only to predict but also influence decisions through interventions on the environment where decisions are made.

Learn more by diving into this GOTO Book Club episode with Fabio Pereira and Linda Rising.

Intro

Linda Rising: My name is Linda Rising. As you can see, I'm incredibly old. I was born in 1942. That means I'm not a member of Gen Z or the millennials, but a member of what was called the silent generation. My family did not have television until I was 10 years old. So, I certainly didn't grow up with a computer or a phone. I don't struggle with the problems that many of you do. I don't have an addiction to devices. I often forget to turn my phone on in the morning and check for any email or phone messages. What we know about the way the world is headed now is a serious problem for increasing numbers of people. I was really happy to see this book “Digital Nudge” by my good friend, Fabio, and I'm gonna enjoy the discussion that we're gonna have today. So, Fabio, take it away.

Fabio Pereira: Hi Linda, what an honor to have you here in this conversation with me about the “Digital Nudge” book. It was amazing to meet you in Copenhagen in 2019 when we were still able to hug each other at conferences. And hopefully, soon we'll be able to do that again. I'm Fabio Pereira, I am the author of the book, "Digital Nudge." I've been working with technology for over 20 years now. I have a computer science degree and I started as a Java developer back in 2000. It was early in my career when I realized that the digital transformation and the technology revolution that we are going through right now, are more about humans and behavior than actually technology. I fell in love with something called behavioral economics, which is a recent area of research and study on human irrationality. I created this merge between behavioral economics and the digital world that ended up being documented if you will, in the "Digital Nudge" book. It's an honor to be here talking to you right now Linda.

Fabio giving his book to Linda at GOTO Copenhagen 2019

 

35,000 decisions a day 

Linda Rising: When you say behavioral economics, you wanna refer to the classic "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman who won a Nobel prize. And also the book that's called "Nudge" by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. There's been an explosion of awareness of the problem that we have, that we are learning more. Behavioral economists are doing experiments that tell us more about how we think, how we make decisions, how we solve problems. And why is that so terrifying for those people who haven't read your book yet? What's the scary thing about behavioral economics?

Fabio Pereira: What scared me the most when I started reading the books, and you're right, it's all those books, "Thinking, Fast and Slow," "Nudge" from Thaler and Sunstein, and also "Predictably Irrational" from Dan Ariely, which was actually the first book I read on the topic. I had the huge privilege to meet Dan Ariely as well. Amazing people thinking about how we make decisions. 

Fabio Pereira and Dan Ariely

What scares me the most is the number 35,000, which ironically is the number I'm wearing here on the t-shirt. Thirty-five thousand is the number of decisions we make every day. And we tend to think that we are rational, right?

I grew up hearing and studying that humans are rational beings. And then I bumped into this book called "Predictably Irrational" where we get scientific experiments proving that we are irrational and in a predictable way. That was the thing that scared me the most. And I started making some correlations between when we are being irrational in the digital world. 

I'll give you an example. If we go to Google right now and we search for where to eat in New York, we will have over 1 billion results. And Google calculates that in 0.94 seconds. So, in less than one second, it gives us 1 billion results. It just turns out that 9 in 10 people click on a result on the first page of the Google results. I started realizing that those decisions were not made by me anymore. I started just having that thought in my mind that I am not in control of my life anymore, that the digital world is controlling me and I am being nudged, that's when the "Digital Nudge" concept came about. I was being nudged all the time in order to make decisions, and I thought I was making those decisions consciously, but I wasn't. And that's what scared me the most.

Nudging was not invented in the digital world

Linda Rising: I teach a class on "Thinking, Fast and Slow," and I'm getting ready to do another class on "Influence" by Robert Cialdini. And you're right, Dan Ariely, I think is the most accessible of all the behavioral economists. He's not only written several books that are a lot easier going than "Thinking, Fast and Slow". He's got several amazing Ted Talks for people who are fans of Ted Talks, and that would be me. His personal story is also very compelling. I guess what we wanna realize is that nudging or some form of influence has always been with us. People who were talented sales people or charismatic leaders at some level already knew all the things that behavioral economists are now proving with science to say, “Yes, this is a good thing to do to get people to make decisions.” So, it's not that we can throw it out. There are some people who are very resistant to advances in technology and say, well, let's just get rid of that because all our environments do contain nudges. Even if they're not being done by technology, it's not that we could get rid of that. What's the real danger that you see?

Other books that inspired Digital Nudge

Fabio Pereira: I completely agree with you. We've always been influenced by people. I like to mention Cialdini as well. One of the areas of research that I did in order to write the book was also the science behind persuasion and influence. We've definitely always been persuaded and influenced. It just turns out that behavioral economists have mapped all that into the over 180 cognitive biases we have now. I guess the difference is that some people do it intuitively and some people do it knowing what they are doing. If you go to a travel website right now and you wanna book a flight, automatically the website says there is only one spot left on this flight. You're looking at your loss aversion and scarcity. So, those concepts like scarcity, loss aversion, and all those other types of biases that we get influenced by all the time, they've always existed. It just turns out that we've mapped them now.

I love analogies. I'm gonna make an analogy here too, to guide the conversation as well. The virus has existed for thousands, maybe millions of billions of years, but it's been less than 150 years since we've discovered officially what a virus is. But they've always been here. It's almost like those kinds of things in our brains that they've always been inside of us, but now they are all mapped. And because they are mapped, they can become a tool to help people, or they can become a weapon like in the book the "Weapons of Math Destruction." They can be like data, algorithms and all the combinations between the digital world and how humans behave can become very powerful if in the wrong hands.

Humans are highly irrational and biased

Linda Rising: And I know that when I'm preparing for "Thinking, Fast and Slow" or "Influenced" or picking up a book like yours, I always struggle to say to myself, "Why is it that we have to convince people that they are not rational?" and we started this conversation by pointing that out as being so obvious, especially now that we have results from behavioral economists. But what I have to struggle to realize is that each one of us, as an individual, we believe that we are rational. We might agree that, okay, there are experiments that show how irrational other people are. And yes, that's clear. We see that, we see how irrational other people are. We can see their biases, but somehow we're able to deceive ourselves and to believe even in the face of evidence that no, we are rational. We make rational decisions. And furthermore, that we see reality, we see the truth. So, in the United States, right now, we have extreme polarization based on political ideologies, and each side believes that. Each side is influenced by their social media, TV news they watch and they believe they see the truth. It's not that they're saying, "Oh, well, I'm gonna line up behind Donald Trump," because even in the face of evidence to the contrary, no, they deeply believe. And that's all of us. We all believe that we're rational. We believe we see reality. And that's why these digital nudges are so dangerous because we believe that we're okay, that we make good decisions. That's so scary to me.

Fabio Pereira: Yeah. And sometimes we think that this will happen in the future. Sometimes we feel like “One day when artificial intelligence takes over.” “One day when robots become more intelligent.” but it's already happening, we are already consuming information. I’m working on my next book and it has to do with information consumption. The way we consume information, it's totally nudged. If we open a timeline right now, it could be on LinkedIn, Twitter, any social media, the sequence in which information will appear to us is completely outside of our control. There’s a concept called filter bubbles, which is, if I start consuming information about one thing, I will only be fed information about that same thing, which turns out that it will confirm my view on the thing. I end up being inside that bubble. You mentioned reality and my reality becomes my bubble. I stop empathizing with other people's realities and I stop understanding that another type of world exists outside of my own bubble. And that's very problematic as well and it's already happening right in front of us.

Linda Rising: Yeah. I think what we also know from behavioral economics is that you can be aware, you can know the science, you can look at the evidence that clearly shows that we have these biases. You've mentioned several, and there are several in your book. Confirmation bias, I think is the worst and that's the one you were alluding to is once you have a belief, then you will do it on your own, you will filter out any information to the contrary. So, you can be aware of that and yet at the same time, believe that you are not subject to that bias. Even graduate students or scientists who work in the field somehow believe because they know, we know these biases, that somehow that protects us. So, awareness is not sufficient. After I've finished a class on "Influenced" or "Thinking, Fast and Slow," I always tell my students in that class, "Just because you know, just because you've seen, just because you've read Fabio's book and you think that you are now acquainted with all the biases that humans suffer from them, that does not make you immune. Those are hardwired. Those have been with us for tens of thousands of years. We're not gonna be able to discard those just because we have some information about them." So, in a way that's kind of discouraging. What about you, Fabio? Are you optimistic? Are you hopeful?

Fabio Pereira: Yeah. In terms of, the fact that knowing is not enough and being aware is not enough, I like to use an analogy a lot, which is about swimming. There is no way to learn how to swim just by reading a book, right? Only Sheldon from the TV show "The Big Bang Theory," said that he learned how to swim reading two books, because he doesn't need water to learn how to swim. I follow Buddhism as well and in Buddhism, there is the concept of the practice. One thing is what's written and the other thing is putting it in practice. My view about the biases is that knowing the biases will never make us immune, but it can help the consequences. And it has helped me and I have testimonials from a lot of people who have said that it's helped them as well. So for instance, on the one I just mentioned right now, if I'm buying something and suddenly I see that this is the last one, I just think twice. I just think with my slow brain to refer to Kahneman's, and then I try to think, is it really true that there's only one left? Or are they using scarcity to influence me?

If I didn't know anything about scarcity or loss aversion, I wouldn't even have that thought. So, that's why I believe that it's not enough to make us fully immune, but it can help minimize the consequences. And also in terms of being hopeful for the future, I think there are two types of future. There is a future that will happen regardless of our actions, and there are futures that will happen based on our influence. If I am an influential person and I mention something about Bitcoin, it can definitely affect the price of Bitcoin. So, if I am an influential person and I mentioned something about digital nudging and the fact that we need policies and that we need morals and ethics behind the way that we get influenced, I believe that that can happen as well. So, my dream is to actually create a future and help create a future with influential people like you, like everyone who might be listening to this, we need a movement around exactly what I call digital nudge for good. And I know I'm not alone. There are other movements in that same direction as well.

Tristan Harris has a very good movement that he calls Humane Tech. He used to call it Time Well Spent. And there's a few other thought leaders in that same area as well.I really liked the movement called the Algorithmic Justice League from Joy Buolamwini, and those two movements I've mentioned right now, there are two very good documentaries that have been released recently. One is "The Social Dilemma" and the other one is "Coded Bias," that talks about biased AI and how actually if we create artificial intelligence with our biases, it can be even more dangerous because the decisions made by artificial intelligence can be escalated to a large degree. I am hopeful for the future because we can create it. So let's create a better future because otherwise, it can be really bad.

Linda Rising: Absolutely. I agree. And let me add to your list. There's an individual named Mark Hurst who is also doing what he can. I feel like many of these efforts are just kind of whistles in the wind because we're fighting an enormous series of organizations that have a lot of power in our lives. The other suggestion from Kahneman is diversity. That it's a part of the agile precepts and the recommendation that successful organizations are built on diversity can also help with bias because if I include on my team people who are different from me, not just gender, but race, culture, religion, different points of view, then it's so easy for us to see the bias in others, and so easy for others to see our biases. And Kahneman says he doesn't have much hope for individuals because these things are deeply hardwired, but he says organizations can develop what he calls an immune system, just like an immune system on response that we are all hoping to have against this virus, that an organization can develop that by having diverse teams. That these different points of view protect the organization from making bad decisions, from going down a path because they all sing the same songs and they all agree.

So, that's a hopeful thing for not only organizations, but communities and families. We all have contentious members of our families, and normally we don't listen to them. We get together, but we don't wanna talk about difficult things or if we do, we don't wanna hear what other people say. So, this is to encourage everyone, even though we don't like to do it. To really listen, that's a pattern from Fearless Change, just listen. You don't have to worry about changing other people's minds or worrying about them trying to attack your points of view, but just listen with the idea of trying to learn, this is the beginner's mind. Buddhism talks about pretending you don't know anything, pretending this person is wise and is teaching you. And what they're explaining is how they see the world, and you won't necessarily come away from that by having convinced each other of anything. You're not logically arguing. But we've forgotten how to do that, listening, we've forgotten about being humble. And if there's anything, all this information about how biased we are and how bad a lot of our decisions are, it should lead us down the road to more humility, more listening. And that's also a hopeful thing.

Technology has taken over our attention

Fabio Pereira: What's amazing, Linda, is that when I listen to you, I don't have to pretend I don't know anything. It just feels like there's so much I wish I could learn from you. And I actually wanted to ask you a question, in your life, how do you see the progression of technology and how do you see the level of influence? First, we had radio as one channel of communication, everyone listening to that one radio station and receiving the same level of information, and right now we have streaming and we have social media and we have different ways how information gets to us. How do you visualize that progression over time from technology and us?

Linda Rising: You've probably never had the experience of listening to the radio in your family's setting. But for me, when I look back on that as a child, some of my best memories are gathering as a family, especially on Saturday night. I grew up in Chicago and the Sunday papers came out on Saturday night. We were able to buy, there was no subscription. You had to go to the newsstand and buy the newspapers. We bought the three major papers in Chicago on Saturday night. They had the colored funny papers in those three newspapers. And then we would all listen to The Jack Benny Show and other radio programs. But we didn't just sit there and stare at the radio. We were doing other things. We were reading the funnies. My father was reading the rest of the newspaper. My mother was doing some kind of needlework. We were all doing other things. We had the radio on in the background. So, there wasn't this intense unitary focus of all listening to the same program with the same intensity that we do now when we're staring at a movie or some kind of program on television, where everybody's staring with that fixed focus. And that's what I see has increased over time, as technology has entered, it has taken over our attention. Radio was in the background.

My grandmother always had the radio on while she was cooking, but she wasn't focused on it. She just had music playing or the news was playing, but it was in the background. And it didn't require that you had the focused attention that we now give. Now, when you walk into someone's kitchen, everybody's got a phone on the counter. And when the phone buzzes, when an email arrives or a text arrives, the focus shifts from whatever was going on to that phone. The phone has interrupted the normal flow of everyday life and it said "Pay attention to me." Even when you're having a one-on-one conversation, if the phone goes off, the attention shifts, and now I don't really care about the real person I might be talking to, I pay attention to this phone. The phone is the most important. There are people who, and I'm talking about my husband now, there are people who sleep with their phones on. That's the difference, I think.

Fabio Pereira: I like you mentioned attention. Attention is our most valuable asset right now and it's intangible. So, we don't know where we're giving our attention to. I also wanna refer a very good book from a friend, Nir Eyal, his new book is called "Indistractable." I believe that being indistractable is one thing we have to work on and create that practice. And I'll be really honest with you, at this very moment, Linda, this conversation with you, it's the one most important thing happening right now. There is nothing that can distract me. All my notifications are completely disabled and I actually live with that. I live without notifications because I want to be able to control my attention because it is a very valuable asset. And sometimes we don't realize how much we are giving our attention away, and look at this memorable moment I'll have for the rest of my life, this conversation with you, learning so much from Linda, and then I don't want to be distracted at this moment.

Linda Rising: We mentioned Daniel Kahneman's book earlier, "Thinking, Fast and Slow." And he points out that system two that's our conscious attention is limited and requires a lot of energy. And so, we should use it wisely. If we spend it on things that are not important to us, then at the end of the day, we wasted that valuable resource on things we don't really care about, on things that really didn't help us achieve whatever the purpose is in our lives. And for those of us who are getting closer to the end than the beginning, we know that those moments are precious. And we don't wanna hand them over just because we've gotten a text message from some nonprofit organization that wants to get me very angry about something that's happening in the world right now so that I will make a donation to a cause I care about. We have to really be, I'm going to say, frugal, misers, just like money with our attention, because otherwise, we'll find that if we're profligate and wasteful it's as though we're spending, it's even more valuable than money. This is all we have. After all, this is our life.

Fabio Pereira: Yes. And, to refer to Eckhart Tolle as well, the author of the book "The Power of Now," which is someone that I get a lot of inspiration from too, the only thing we have is the present moment because the future and the past are all creations of our minds, and all we have is the present moment. And wherever our attention is in the present moment is where we will absolutely be. Yeah, so, I'm also a huge follower of "The Power of Now." And in fact, when I was translating the book to Portuguese because I'm originally Brazilian and I'm partly Australian as well, I've lived in Australia for eight years, when I was translating the book to Portuguese, there is no direct translation to the word "nudge" in Portuguese because there is only touch and push, but nudge, which is something in between, it doesn't exist. I translated the book to digital consciousness. So, the title of the book in Portuguese is "Digital Consciousness," and it is actually one of the dreams I have is to expand my digital consciousness and help people expand their digital consciousness as well, which is all about becoming more aware of how irrational we are and not allow us to be manipulated by big organizations and the digital world.

Positive aspects of digital nudging

Linda Rising: I'm wondering if we should just spend a minute trying to be positive or optimistic to say some of the good things that are happening as a result of the digital nudging, the increasing information that we have about behavioral economics, about influencing others. I'm sure you have lots of examples. The one that comes to mind that they can tell from a series of searches that people make, whether or not they might have a fairly serious form of cancer. It's astounding to me that the limited amount of data that's involved in this study could point to a high incidence of this cancer. It's pancreatic cancer, by the way. And normally pancreatic cancer is not found until it has progressed beyond the point where there's not much that can be done. It's a devastating kind of cancer. And the idea that by looking at a series of searches, that you could inform some individual, you should go to the doctor, you should get this checked out. It's possible. We're not saying this is not a diagnosis, but we're saying there are indications that you might have pancreatic cancer. And if you go now, you could save your own life. Now, some people might feel that's intrusive, some people might worry about their privacy, but if it were me and I realized this was a life-saving intervention, a life-saving digital nudge, I would welcome it. I would think this is a good thing. What do you think?

Fabio Pereira: I agree with you. I agree to end on a high note and finish with the good things about digital nudges. And the one you just mentioned is phenomenal. Just to think about getting nudged about the propensity of having cancer and being able to save one life because of that. I also mentioned in the book a couple of other examples. For instance, people with diabetes right now have the ability to have their glucose being monitored continuously and be nudged when to do something about it. A friend of mine in Australia, Greg, used to wear a continuous glucose monitoring system. And he said, "You know what's amazing, when I'm in a meeting, I don't have to worry about it because the device is making that decision for me." So, artificial intelligence is always becoming better and better at diagnosing several types of diseases, analyzing imaging exams, and at getting people's life history, and giving advice on that. I truly believe that the technology for good movement and the nudges for good can help us. It all depends on which hands the data will be. Because as you mentioned, your search history data can be in the hands of someone that will help you with a propensity of cancer, or it can influence someone to offer you to buy something you don't really need.

Linda Rising: Yeah. And of course, we know that this technology is created by humans. And so, it will never be perfect. I like a statement that Kent Beck made years ago about agile. He said, "Perfect is a verb. It's perfect. That means getting better." And we're right in the middle of so many things right now. And that's our best hope. Not that things aren't, well, pretty bad right now, but we are hoping, we are hoping that because we're aware of it and because we are intelligent, even if we don't always make rational decisions, that things will get better, that we can move in that direction. In the face of climate change, in the face of a pandemic, in the face of all of the technology hurdles we face, that is our best hope. And I did get that message from your book, which is one of the things I liked about it is that we hope to get better. And the first step is awareness. So, you have made us aware and you have given us hope. Thank you for that, Fabio,

Fabio Pereira: Thank you so much, Linda. And, you probably don't even know, I don't remember if I told you in 2019, but one of the people in the whole world that actually guided me in this direction of learning more about people’s behavior was you. I watched a talk that you gave in Brisbane years and years ago when I was living in Australia. Amongst so many people talking about technology, technology and like test-driven development and agile and all that, I saw Linda Rising talking about humans and talking about the fact that going out for lunch and looking at trees can actually change our productivity in the afternoon. I really remember you saying that. And so, thank you so much for making us aware of those things too.

Linda Rising: Thank you, Fabio. It's my pleasure.

Off Video

Linda Rising: Fabio, I'm trying to have several new talks come out of this pandemic and one of them is about trees.

Fabio Pereira: So, there you go. I actually changed a few of my habits when I heard you say that and I try to find trees and I try to have a walk at a park every now and then, too. I think it clears our minds. And yesterday I actually read that if you smell rosemary, I think it's rosemary, it activates things in your brain that improves your memory by 75%. 

Linda Rising: Bring all the rosemary. So, when is your next book coming out? I didn't know you were working on the next book. But of course, you are working on another book.

Fabio Pereira: I don't have a date yet, but the topic that I want to discuss is around what we are calling infobesity, which is the overload of information that we get bombarded by and how to deal with that. I’m using the analogy with obesity. If information was like food, how can we create an information diet and not just consume junk food all the time, and when we are full of junk food, then there is no space in our brains for good information.

Linda Rising: Oh, good. That sort of ties in with Kahneman's new book on “Noise” that gets in the way of our making good decisions and solving problems. It is the randomness of the kinds of thinking that we do when we don't make good decisions. Sounds like they would be good companions. I look forward to that. 

One good outcome of the pandemic, I think, is that I didn't write a book, but I think I reviewed or gave feedback or saw, or somehow helped along the way so many books. I have a big pile here of books that I've read, but yeah, it's definitely a challenge. And that speaks to your next book, Fabio, because now they're starting to look like this. I don't know if you know this book, it's called "Behave." It's very thick and the print inside is minuscule. So, this takes a lot of effort, a lot of system to focus and that's just one book. That's sort of a good problem that has come out of this pandemic. Not only do we have a little more time to read, but so many smart people have been writing so many books. Wow.

Fabio Pereira: Wow. Yeah. No, this one I hadn't seen yet, but it's definitely gonna be on my list now.

Linda Rising: The comment on the front is this is probably the best non-fiction book ever written. It's like Yuval Harari's books, it's everything. 

Fabio Pereira: The way I like to write is by not starting with writing. The way I started "Digital Nudge" was by giving talks. I started giving talks and talks and talks. And the good thing I think about giving talks is that I get feedback from the audience. I like to start speaking first and then I transform the speaking into writing. And right now I've been giving lots of talks about infobesity and getting feedback from people mapping what the problems are. What are infobesity signs and trying to run some experiments with people on treatments as well. One of the big overflood of information that we receive is email. Email is one thing that gets to us in a timeline and there is no official algorithm to sort. It is fully up to us to sort, and Gmail has some clever ways of filtering, but I've also been prioritizing email consumption as one of the priorities. Because research shows that in companies, in organizations, we tend to spend over 20% of our time just processing email. And it's not even reading, it's just processing useless emails that we shouldn't even be processing to begin with. So it's a huge waste of time.

Linda Rising: Amen!

Fabio Pereira: I was going to say, now I have two in my list of amazing people. I have you in my list, Linda, of amazing people I have met and I spoke about digital consciousness. The other one is Eckhart Tolle. I had a 16-minute conversation with him. It's recorded on YouTube and it's on his channel. It's got over a hundred thousand views on digital consciousness. And the quick chat I had with Steve Wosniak in Copenhagen as well, I think those I'm gonna add to the top three most amazing people I've already spoken to in my life.

Linda Rising: And you mentioned earlier Dan Ariely, that you had met him. He came to Nashville to give a talk at a local university and to meet someone like that up close and in person, when you read all their books and you followed all their YouTube talks and their Ted Talks, I think, like wow, what an amazing guy.

Fabio Pereira: Yes. Dan as well. And the good thing is, as you know, his life history. He had burns on his body so he has problems typing. Every message he sends to you is an audio message. It's amazing because instead of getting a written email, we get an audio from him and I'm like, "Ah, I'm getting an audio from Dan Ariely."

Linda Rising: Very inspiring individual and so is Kahneman. Kahneman is now in his 80s and he's just turned out this brand new book "Noise," which is another one of those very thick ones. I have it over here on my shelf. I haven't started it yet, but to think of the effort and the thoughts he put into that. I mean, he's a very deep thinker, all the deep thought that went through that. And here's a man in his 80s, I say that at 79 thinking, wow, 80 is really old, but yeah, inspiring, awesome individuals.

Fabio Pereira: Yes. I started consuming some of the "Noise" content from his talk. I've watched a few interviews that he gave. And one thing that caught my attention from "Noise" is a research that shows that judges when they are hungry, they are actually less likely to give something to the defendant.

Linda Rising: Yeah, parole decisions are less likely as they get hungrier and tired over the course of the day. So, something to think about if you're ever coming up for parole.

Fabio Pereira: And also in our lives. I know that when I am hungry, I become hangry because it just affects my inner self somehow. And I actually had arguments in my life where I was stressed and then I ate and I was like, whoa, something happened.

Linda Rising: Well, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. Thanks for writing your book, Fabio. I look forward to the next one.

Fabio Pereira: Thank you. It was a huge pleasure. Everything I've done so far with what I call the GOTO family has been fantastic.

About the speakers

Fabio @fabiopereirame is a TEDx speaker and speaker coach, futurist and technologist focused on people. He has a dream to become a billionaire, but not financially — he wishes to positively impact the lives of a billion digital citizens. He's the author of the book Digital Nudge, which was a best-seller at GOTO Copenhagen 2019.

His innovative and provoking thinking about the brain science behind the digital world have allowed him to speak at several conferences and events in Australia, the United States, China, Germany and Brazil. Fabio is the head of Open Innovation Labs Latin America at Red Hat and has over 20 years of experience, 10 of those at ThoughtWorks Australia where he acted as Digital Transformation Advisor for several clients including the Australian Government Digital Transformation Agency.

Fabio is passionate about human behavior and believes that understanding the psychology and the hidden forces that drive the 35 thousand decisions we make every day can drastically change our lives.

 

Linda Rising @RisingLinda has a Ph.D. from Arizona State University in the field of object-based design metrics and a background that includes university teaching and industry work in telecommunications, avionics, and strategic weapons systems.

An internationally known presenter on topics related to patterns, retrospectives, agile development approaches, and the change process, Linda is the author of numerous articles and five books:

• Design Patterns in Communications Software
• The Pattern Almanac 2000
• The Patterns Handbook: Techniques, Strategies, and Applications
• Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas
• More Fearless Change: Strategies for Making Your Ideas Happen

Recommended talk: #DigitalNudge - The Hidden Forces that Shape our Digital Decisions • Fabio Pereira • GOTO 2020

Recommended talk: Thinking Fast and Slow • Linda Rising • GOTO 2019