We need a sixth sense to fight global warming

OPINION The sixth sense If we could see the energy we use we wouldn’t be so wasteful. Technology can help, says Joseph Giacomin ROUGHLY 30 to 40 per cent of global energy use occurs in buildings. Given the fundamental importance of this source of carbon emissions, great efforts are being made to lower consumption. The challenge is difficult, however, because several factors are at work, including the building itself, the energy systems it uses and, above all, human behaviour. Past efforts to reduce energy use in buildings have been dominated by technical solutions such as improved insulation. Now, however, human behaviour is moving centre stage. Simple actions such as forgetting to turn off the heating when leaving home lead to heat losses that no amount of technology can prevent. In the UK, the new carbon reduction plan by the Department for Communities and Local Government, which provides Let’s build a Babbage It’s time to realise one of computing’s greatest visions, says John Graham-Cumming IN 1837 British mathematician Charles Babbage described a mechanical computer that later became known as the Analytical Engine. Calling it a computer is no stretch: the Analytical Engine had a central processing unit and memory and would have been programmed with punched cards. Parts of the Analytical Engine 26 | NewScientist | 18 December 2010 were built in the 1800s and are on display in the Science Museum in London along with a stack of punched cards. But Babbage never completed the project. The computer was an extension of his well-known Difference Engine, which was designed to calculate tables of numbers such as logarithms. guidance for all governmentsponsored building projects, emphasises behavioural change. It states: “Many of the actions we are taking… are aimed at securing changes in thinking and ultimately behaviours.” So how can behaviour be changed? One obvious if unimaginative way is through public awareness campaigns and energy-training programmes, which can help save up to 10 per cent on the average home or commercial energy bill. Another is direct consumption feedback, which allows people to see how much energy they are using in real-time displays on smart meters. Many homes and offices are now equipped with smart meters, which have been shown to reduce energy consumption by between 5 and 15 per cent. Is this really the best we can do? I think not. The modern world is full of gadgets which provide us with information laid out in ways ranging from simple numbers to histograms and pie charts. From our ovens to smartphone apps, we are overwhelmed by a barrage of data. But numbers, histograms and pie charts are not natural or intuitive to follow. They work, but only up to a point. The answer may be to endow humans with an “energy sixth While building a prototype simpler and faster model referred of the Difference Engine No 1, to as No 2. But though he never Babbage realised that a more built this machine either, he left general-purpose machine was complete plans which the Science possible. While the Difference Museum used to build a working Engine could perform the same model in the early 1990s. set of calculations over and over So far no one has completed again, it couldn’t examine its own Babbage’s tour de force: the first results to change its calculations. working computer. I think it is A machine that can do that has time to make amends. the power of a modern computer. Building the Difference Engine Even though the Analytical No 2 eliminated much of the Engine would have been doubt about Babbage’s designs mechanical and powered by and showed that the machine steam, it would likely have been Turing-complete – that is, capable “Even steam-powered, the analytical engine would of computing any computable have been able to compute function. Babbage later returned to difference engines, designing a any computable function” Comment on these stories at www.NewScientist.com/opinion Joseph Giacomin is director of the Human Centred Design Institute at Brunel University in Uxbridge, UK could have been built in the 1800s. Since the Analytical Engine shares many elements with Difference Engine No 2, it too would likely have worked, but we won’t know until we build one. I have started a project to build an analytical engine, dubbed Plan 28 after one of Babbage’s detailed plans. I’m aiming for £100,000 and hope to complete the project in time for the 150th anniversary of Babbage’s death on 18 October 2021. n John Graham-Cumming is author of The Geek Atlas: 128 places where science and technology come alive. For more information visit plan28.org One minute with... George Soros Economics needs fixing, says the controversial billionaire financier who is bankrolling an institute to rethink the subject You have provided $50 million to set up the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) in New York City. What prompted you to do this? It was the crash of 2008, which brought home the fact that there is something broken in economic theory. Two ideas – rational expectations theory and the efficient market hypothesis – have a monopoly of thought. Neither prepared us for the crash, yet other ideas don’t have enough support. I talked to friends about how to address this and the idea of an institute emerged. Now it’s running away with itself. I have never been involved in any initiative with this kind of selfgenerating interest before. What does the institute aim to achieve? A radical reorientation of economic theory. Exactly what shape it will take is impossible to predict, but I hope it will recognise the fundamental uncertainties in our economic system. These uncertainties have been ignored for the past 25 years. Wouldn’t it be better to eliminate the uncertainties, so we can avoid a repeat of the financial crisis of 2008? We will never be able to do that. There will always be a threat of instability – it’s built into the market. You can’t avoid it, but you can be aware of it. Perfection might be unattainable, but we can become less imperfect by recognising the imperfections. Tell me about some of the projects that have been selected for funding by the institute. I am encouraged by the fact that INET is embracing multiple disciplines. The first round of grants have been given to people with backgrounds in law, history, medicine and science, as well as economics and finance. Several projects are taking concepts directly from science, such as the mathematics behind the spread of contagious diseases, and applying the principles to financial markets. During the financial crisis we saw instances of contagion – how a relatively small number of infected institutions made others sick. Profile George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary. He studied at the London School of Economics before moving to the US in 1956. He is chair of Soros Fund Management and founding sponsor of The Institute for New Economic Thinking, led by former fund manager Robert Johnson Is INET also funding research to examine whether investors make use of all the information available to them? Yes. The research is looking into how well markets reflect useful and true information about asset prices, given the presence of real-world ambiguities. It is also trying to understand what happens to asset prices when true uncertainty is wrongly discarded. You have been developing an alternative economic theory, known as reflexivity, for years. Will INET be a vehicle to explore your own ideas? I won’t impose my views on the institute. I provided the initial funds, but I don’t want to provide more than a third of the funding. INET has to have its own identity. When the first round of grants were chosen earlier this year I didn’t even see the applications. I’m not on INET’s board or its advisory board. Interview by Jim Giles 18 December 2010 | NewScientist | 27 HERMANN BREDEHORST/EYEVINE sense”. Evolution did not provide us with a system for directly sensing energy use, but this can be rectified by designing products that announce their energy usage in natural and intuitive ways. Various examples of such energy sixth-sense products are already in development, including household goods with power cords which light up in proportion to the current flowing through them, and thermostats with thermal images to visualise energy use. Also in the pipeline are industrial tools which change colour in response to heat build-up, and office tools which visualise the energy consumed by IT equipment. The products use intuitive feedback methods, such as colour and light intensity, to inform people how much energy they are using. Rather than scientific accuracy, the idea is to stimulate interest and emotional engagement to produce longterm changes in understanding and behaviour. If we are serious about reducing energy consumption from buildings we need to add an energy sixth sense to our everyday lives. n