"The idea of changing behaviour, conditioning living creatures, to obey rules enforced my machines feels very disturbing to me."

I've made use of this technique on myself; I've got a concentration app that, when turned on, will make an abhorrent piercing noise if I go on Facebook/Twitter/Hackernews/ read RSS feeds / etc. It's helped me train myself to focus when I'm working.

I will grant that using this on someone else without their knowledge is more questionable, but I wanted to say that it's sometimes legitimate.