How apps alter behaviour - personal anecdata

I like keeping a record of which football matches I see. I blogged about this last year. I like to use an app called Futbology - as featured in my review of last season - which acts as a way of finding games to go to, recording games I've been to, and marks various milestones along the way. This includes awarding 'badges' for noteworthy things like seeing the same team a certain number of times or attending games in different countries. 

I noticed I was due to get a badge - my 450th game attended overall - and I discovered something strange. I was reluctant to 'waste' the badge on a random game. I had a plan to watch Shrewsbury play in Portsmouth at the end of October and found myself planning to use that game to trigger getting the badge for 450 games. 

That meant I passed up the opportunity to go to a couple of games - not in itself a bad thing. Like any interest it's easy to get a bit obsessed and a football free weekend like the one I had in the middle of October is probably quite healthy. And, fortunately, everything aligned for me to hit the 450 game milestone at the game I wanted to hit it at. 

The reason I'm blogging about this, however, is because I realised that my relationship with this app had subtly changed. Before the app I never kept a record of my total games. I would not have known I was reaching 450 games. 

Knowing that I was reaching that total altered my game-going habits. Indirectly, the app shaped my choices. This is an example of how technology shapes our lives through unintended influences. My behaviour change on a micro-level is fairly unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but this kind of influence is being replicated in dozens of ways that we might not even notice. 

Our relationship with technology could well have an evolutionary impact on humans generally and we wouldn't necessarily know. I've blogged previously about how we outsource memories (referencing Futbology!) and the idea that we have digital doppelgangers who will outlive us as shadows on the web. I don't find that overly worrying or anything. It's just something I'm noticing.  It's fascinating being part of the overall evolution into a digital species.