TW: So many things in life can be improved through enhanced information. This Fortune piece was partially its usual puffery for a big company in this case IBM, but the article also frames so of the opportunities out there to greatly enhance our energy efficiency and enhancing quality of life concurrently. The free market will drive so of these initiatives but governments will need to participate as well to burn through vested commercial interests and prime the investment pump at times.
From Fortune:
"...[many societal problems are] propagated by a single culprit: a lack of quality information.
Gridlock is what happens when drivers aren't aware of congestion or don't know how to avoid it. How do we stop E. coli? Cut off the bacteria at its source - if only we had a transparent supply chain. The same goes for power outages. If we could accurately monitor power flow across the electricity grid, the location of a short would become apparent. As for the tree that gives us chocolate, well, with a clear fix on its genome, creating a disease-resistant, heat-tolerant supercacao would be as easy as cross-breeding garden tomatoes.
In the parlance of the information technology industry, these situations all represent "dumb network" problems. The term sounds pejorative, but it simply means that we don't truly understand commuter traffic or electricity flow or the inner workings of the cacao genome, and as a result our highways, utility grids, and cash crops are not managed as effectively as they could be.
The good news is that we now have the technology to convert these analog distribution systems into multidirectional "smart" networks. Readily available sensor technologies like RFID chips and digital video can track movements in granular detail. Cheap data storage, powerful analytics software, and abundant computing capacity give us the ability to warehouse and make sense of all that information. With the knowledge we're gaining, we can remake our world in a more efficient way.
...[IBM] is encouraging his employees to think even bigger, to scout out any dumb network that can be made smarter. Because, as any self-respecting capitalist knows, in great pain lies dormant profit. "We are looking at huge problems that couldn't be solved before. We can solve congestion and pollution. We can make the grids more efficient," he says. "And quite honestly, it creates a big business opportunity."
...Swedes pride themselves on an optimum quality of life, so government officials put out a request-for-proposal on a congestion-pricing scheme that would charge vehicles for passing through city limits at various times of day.
...Total traffic fell 35% almost immediately and stayed down 22% - and not just at peak times or solely downtown. Emissions also dropped by 14%. The streets became more pedestrian-friendly, and the buses began finishing their routes so quickly that the city had to rewrite the schedules. "For people working and living here, it was a different city. The government had lots of researchers doing surveys to identify the impact," he says. "That wasn't needed."
...Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to digitize the electricity grid. Recently his economic stimulus plan allocated billions to make that promise a reality, and hardware providers, Internet companies, software firms, utilities, and the media have all rallied around the idea. Much of the hype has centered on installing smart meters - basically fancy thermostats that monitor energy use in real time - in our homes.
Sadly, the only information most of us get about our energy consumption comes in the form of a monthly bill, when it's too late to do anything about our behavior. Seeing real-time usage data on the meters, along with options for cheaper times of day to, say, do the laundry, the thinking goes, will encourage us to stop hogging peak kilowatts just as the Swedes curbed unnecessary rush-hour travel. Certainly that's part of the promise of an intelligent grid. But what if the grid were so smart that it could differentiate types of energy, price them accordingly, and heal its own wounds? What if it could actually think for itself?
...Both IBM and CenterPoint are interested in smart meters. Cortez's team rolled out 5,000 smart meters across the utility's service area in March and plans to deploy 2.1 million more over the next five years. The devices work on open protocols and will report usage information to whomever the consumer allows. The idea is that third parties will build custom applications that enable consumers to regulate usage online, at Google PowerMeter, for example. And it shouldn't be long before an iPhone app links a GPS transmitter to the meter, causing the air conditioning to turn on 20 minutes before the owner walks in the door.
...A digitized grid also makes it possible to upload alternative energies easily, whether from the massive wind farms in West Texas or from all the solar panels popping up on suburban rooftops. Which is nothing but good news for the most polluted city in the country. "Houston doesn't meet the federal air-quality standards or the ozone-level standards. That restricts the ability of the city to grow," says Tom Standish, CenterPoint's group president of regulated operations. "That's not good for us, and it's not good for the economy."
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/20/technology/obrien_ibm.fortune/index.htm
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