New Daedalus Blog

Lynne Kiesling

I have been remiss in not recommending to you the New Daedalus blog by Toby Considine, one of the most visionary folks I know in the intelligent buildings and IT space. His post about information and behavior changes discusses the visual information transmission technology used at Southern California Edison to signal price changes to consumers, and it’s an insightful observation.

In particular, Toby’s recent post about managing the impulse for control is incredibly insightful, and highlights one of the challenges we face in moving from centralized, top-down command-and-control to technology-enabled distributed control by individual agents in the electric power network.

It’s hard to give up control. Giving up control means giving up cherished perquisites of authority and the comfort well-worm processes. Giving up control means establishing objectives and letting others perform. But giving up control means the best and the brightest will work with you. Giving up control means that that your organization will be as intelligent as the sum of your staff, and not just as limited as you are. Giving up controls lets individual agents compete on the most economical provision of the best benefits. Giving up control increases the intelligence of any service, human or machine, as the creativity and skills of all our allowed to compete.

If we could only manage the impulse for control…

Added to the blogroll.