Beat congestion - stay at home

With the news today that even the Queen is green, the pressure is mounting for people to take a more responsible approach to travel and its impact on the environment. But, now that cheap air travel has opened up the world to people, it is not easy to turn back the clock and tell people to stay at home. For the wealthy, there is the new trend of offsetting the impact of their trips with investment in green projects (as the Queen plans to do). But for your average Joe, this puts the cost of travel beyond reach and doesn't seem very fair.

Meantime, with increasing congestion in the skies and on the roads, we hear a lot of talk and debate, but don't see much real action. The government wants to introduce road charging to reduce congestion and assures us that this is not another stealth tax but a scheme which will benefit everybody. They claim that when the driving public becomes aware of the real cost of motoring, we will be happy to reduce our time at the wheel. What a load of codswallop.

Most people don't choose to sit in traffic jams morning and evening, 5 days a week. They are there because they have to get to and from work in a country where public transport is increasingly inadequate, unreliable and prohibitively expensive. In a society which requires all schoolchildren and workers to arrive at school or work at approximately the same time every day, it is little wonder there is congestion at peak times.

There are a number of practical steps we could take to improve matters without taxing people. We could stagger school opening times for example, taking the pressure of the school run out of the rush hour. And we could also stagger the school holidays to avoid the travel chaos that occurs every holiday. In light of the inflated travel costs during school holidays, this move would be welcomed by parents and teachers alike I think.

And, rather than penalising people for driving to work, we could reward them for staying at home. Some jobs require a physical presence, such as doctors and teachers and shop keepers. But in our service-based economy a very large percentage of us could use modern communication tools to perform many of our tasks remotely. Not only can telecommuting reduce congestion, but there are proven benefits in terms of increased productivity and enhanced work-life balance. Instead of charging people to use the roads, reward home workers with grants to equip home offices, subsidised broadband and lower taxation for work done from home. Instead of building more roads and airports, invest the money in free wifi and cheap access to video-conferencing facilities in all communities.

A major barrier to the growth of telecommuting is a culture of distrust among employers, a belief that workers will take advantage of the situation and not pull their weight. This is a sad attitude that says more about the employer's lack of self-belief than about the trustworthiness of the workforce. With good communications and efficient performance management, employers will find that workers can be trusted and, with less stress, they will tend to perform beyond expectation. Companies will also benefit from a reduction in the cost of office accommodation and better staff retention. It's a win win situation.

So why isn't it happening? There seems to be an astounding lack of political will to upset the status quo in a way that would reduce our reliance on planes, trains and automobiles. A cynic might say that this arises from the vested interest of car makers, oil companies and the travel sector. That may be the case, but the time when this was acceptable is rapidly running out. When compared to the complicated, costly and socially invasive plans for road charging, the telecommute option appears simpler, less intrusive and rewards people rather than penalising them.

UI design for the cow people

I mentioned the cow people to some people in a chat, which some people found hilarious although others were a bit less taken with the discussion. It led to the following comment from Phil Wolff at SkypeJournal.

Seriously, let's talk about UI design for cows and chickens.
Very simplified contact lists.
Maybe big buttons for a very few messages ("Go away", "I'm hungry", "I'm in estrus", "I'm thirsty", "Danger!").
Moo recognition for the cows; peck sensitive keyboard for the chickens. Webcams for chickens since they don't respond much to audio.
GPS and presence for a cow's family; you-are-getting-hotter/colder signalling for finding your mother/calf.
Alerting for feeding/milking times.
For the chickens, you'd want gear that would fit in/next to a cage. For cows, something they could wear like a cowbell or staple to the ears like an RFID tag.
Hardware must be rugged for the farm; must survive water, dirt, having critters fall all over it.
Cows would have unique power challenges; could you train cows to dock their "headsets" for a recharge? While wi-fi might give you bandwidth, you might need to use cellular technology for the longer battery life.

Bonus points: use your cow's attached skype-phone for medical biotelemetry (body temp, pulse, blood pressure, blood oxygen levels) and send it back to a service for monitoring. Wake up the vet before a cow gets too sick. Automatically adjust the cow's feed based on general health.

Phil is the host in a public chat with the topic Skype 3.1 discussion. Anybody using version 3.0+ of Skype can create, host, moderate and promote a public chat on a website, in email, in IMs, and in Skype mood messages.

The chat threw up many bizarre observations and awful puns (i'll spare you), and a story about a chicken eating cow in India. If the cow people chat is anything to go by, public chat offers lots of possibilities.

On a more serious but equally bizarre note, was an item on the local Beeb news last week - can't find it online unfortunately so no link for now. They reported on a company that is working with algae to save the planet - they want to place large tankfuls of carbon-monoxide loving micro-critters next to every coal-burning power station in the country. They are also exporing its usage as a clean fuel that is far cheaper and more effective as a biofuel than rapeseed. These are the same, or similar microbes, to the ones which first cleaned this planet enough to sustain human life so maybe they are just the medicine we need.

People power - why not?

While You're at It, Why Not Generate A Little Electricity, in the Wall Street Journal, introduces some people who want to harvest human energy. It's an attractive if somewhat kooky idea that conjures up images of the matrix and what to do with our prison population, immigrants, and other social annoyances. However, when you think of the amount of energy people use at the gym, on the sports field, at night clubs - it makes sense to try and harness it.

An extreme sporty Californian persuaded an international fitness club outfit to run an experiment in a gym in Hong Kong. Cost is high and returns are low - less than 200 dollars a year for an investment of 15,000. Enviu, a group of young Dutch environmentalists, have built a dance floor that powers its own internal lighting. Here the price tag is 26K, for some measly floor lights - hmm.

But hey - what does a dance floor normally cost to build and what are the future plans? The WSJ article belittles these projects by presenting scant figures with a distinct bias - I don't think it's fair to judge these projects in simple terms of ROI - looked at as proofs of concept where valuable lessons are learned, these projects are pretty damn cheap.

And the WSJ piece also neglects to mention that the project is finished and the world's first sustainable nightclub opened to the public in Rotterdam, in October 2006.

These are small steps but, as the Enviu people say, part of the value is in making sustainability sexy and cool, not just a geeky, hippy thing. While people power is unlikely to solve all our energy needs, it can help reduce the requirement for non-sustainable resources while increasing our awareness of the direct relationship between energy and consumption.