Clive Thompson Thinks: Desktop Orb Could Reform Energy Hogs

Mark Martinez couldn't get Southern California Edison customers to conserve energy. As the utility's manager of program development, he had tried alerting them when it was time to dial back electricity use on a hot day — he'd fire off automated phone calls, zap text messages, send emails. No dice.

Then he saw an Ambient Orb. It's a groovy little ball that changes color in sync with incoming data — growing more purple, for example, as your email inbox fills up or as the chance of rain increases. Martinez realized he could use Orbs to signal changes in electrical rates, programming them to glow green when the grid was underused — and, thus, electricity cheaper — and red during peak hours when customers were paying more for power. He bought 120 of them, handed them out to customers, and sat back to see what would happen.

Within weeks, Orb users reduced their peak-period energy use by 40 percent. Why? Because, Martinez explains, the glowing sphere was less annoying and more persistent than a text alert. "It's nonintrusive," he says. "It has a relatively benign effect. But when you suddenly see your ball flashing red, you notice."

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That's the power of "ambient information," which tries to combat data overload by moving information off computer screens and into the world around us. The Orb was originally sold as a tool for monitoring financial portfolios. You could set it to shine a serene sky blue when your stocks were going up or pulse an alarming red when they were tanking. Studies showed that people were two to three times more likely to actively manage their investments, selling off deadbeat stocks and buying better-performing ones, when they used the Orb. This is the psychological paradox of ambient information: We're more likely to act on a subtle but continuously present message than an intermittent one we're forced to stare at.

More:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-08/st_thompson


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Slideshow: This Ain't Woody Allen's Orb
See related story: This Ain't Woody Allen's Orb
04.16.04 | 11:17 AM
David Rose, president of Ambient Devices, displays an Ambient Orb. The Orb changes colors to reflect trends in information on a particular subject, which is transmitted through the Internet. AP Photo/Robert Spencer

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2004/04/63093

where the governor of some future society has his nervous system wired up to various social-health indicators. So, when problems start to get out of control, he feels it directly as pain. When things are going well, he feels fine.

There's your ambient info for you, right there.

for executives to monitor the performance of their sweat-shops. Wired right into the buttocks.

I think I'll be adopting that phrase.