智能电击手环——剁手党克星？

智能电击手环——剁手党克星？

市面上有很多号称能帮助用户控制花销的理财app，但没有一个可以从根本上解决缺乏自制力的问题。如今，一种特殊的电击手环Pavlok出现了。电击真的能帮助你克制购物冲动吗？

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

electrocute以电击处死，通电致死[ɪ'lektrəkjuːt]

vie竞争[vaɪ]

bracelet手镯['breɪslət]

stimulus刺激，激励，刺激品['stɪmjʊləs]

squander浪费，使……散开['skwɒndə(r)]

zap击溃，射杀[zæp]

array大批，一系列[ə'reɪ]

clamour喧闹['klæmə(r)]

antidote解毒剂，解['æntidəʊt]

Can an electric shock help curb your spending?（706 words）

By Aime Williams

Tech companies believe that knowledge is power, and the digital banks vying for the world's savers are no exception. By offering colourful apps that promise users control over their finances, companies such as Atom, Monzo and Tandem think that giving people more information will help them make smarter decisions.

But a dark question stalks these ambitions: what if people have no self-control? What if, when told they spend a third of their monthly salary on takeaway coffee, they continue overspending? When it comes to money, sometimes people just don't want to know.

Enter a new breed of sneaky financial apps, which also collect information about your spending habits. They don't, however, bother telling you about them but quietly take action on your behalf. I'm thinking of apps such as Plum and Chip, which monitor your spending and move cash from your current account into your savings when you spend less than usual.

The problem is that they still don't actually stop you spending. While the digital banks try to horrify you by illustrating your monthly caffeine spend with a neatly drawn pie chart, the sneaky apps just accept that you're an idiot and get on with the job of saving you from yourself where they can.

For many, this undercover assistance will be helpful. But for anyone really serious about stopping their coffee habit, there's a new way. Pavlok — its name inspired by Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov — is a bracelet that gives you a mild electric shock if you do something you don't want to do. This method has no interest in your comfort and dignity, only in “allowing you to achieve 100 per cent of your goals 100 per cent of the time” (in the words of its creator).

Pavlok agrees with Chip and Plum's conclusion that you can't be trusted to make good decisions. More data cannot help you resist Pret coffees but what if someone electrocuted you every time you bought one? Might it work?

Maneesh Sethi, Pavlok's inventor, admits that people have been slow to catch on to the idea of negative stimuli instead of rewards — although he has sold about 50,000 Pavloks so far. Sethi invented this bracelet because he had what he described as “a severe addiction to Facebook”. In a neat circle, technology is rounding on itself, getting your attention to stop you squandering your attention. “The thing is, there are lots of positive stimuli in the world, and people get addicted to checking their phones,” says Sethi. “With this, your hand reaches in for your phone and it zaps you.”

Intelligent Environments, another tech company, which develops software for large banks, has linked the Pavlok bracelet directly to users' bank accounts. Tom Stinton, head of product at the company, says technologies such as contactless debit cards or Amazon buttons are helping people spend their money more swiftly. But our growing aversion to physical cash means people now find it harder to monitor their spending. For Intelligent Environments, the answer is not a digital bank but an “internet of things bank”.

The “internet of things” is the name given to the fast-growing array of day-to-day objects that can connect to the internet. The commonly used example is a fridge that orders its own milk when you're running low. The Pavlok fits right into this concept but instead of buying you milk, it electrocutes you.

Unfortunately, Intelligent Environment's clients (ie, large banks) have yet to be persuaded that electrocuting their customers is a good idea. Fear not, though, because Pavlok has found another way to tame your manic profligacy. Its new version can, somewhat worryingly, track your movements and electrocute you if you go anywhere you're not supposed to (like the coffee shop).

None of this is particularly sophisticated, of course. But perhaps it's the logical conclusion of the never-ending clamour for our attention and cash. Maybe our willpower is weaker than before, just as our attention spans are shorter, and the Pavlok is both the result of a tech-powered information overload and an antidote to it.

There is only one more problem but Sethi seems to have considered it already. What if I just decide to take off the bracelet? “We're developing a lock,” he replies.