Open4Energy is the #1 site on the net for unbiased expert information on energy efficiency, in particular how disruptive technologies will equip home owners and small businesses to save energy. Our mission is to provide readers with a secure gateway to real people who have a personal experiences on energy saving to share.
I have been writing on the role of technology as a catalyst for behavioral change for three decades. My early thinking was influenced by my late father, a founding member of the computer industry in South Africa, who often said "the only thing you can count count on, besides death and taxes, is change." But it was the writer Alvin Toffler, in particular through his book Future Shock, and then Power Shift, who really got my mind thinking on the relationships between information, behavior and change.
I give thanks to Simon Bailey, who did the original research into SPIN Selling in Rotheram England, who saw potential in my dreams, and to Huthwaite International who worked with me in the 90's to explore how face to face persuasive behavioral models might apply to Internet communications.
There are 110 million families and 27 million small businesses in the United States whose collective energy waste is a national problem. As James Hansen, one of the early scientists who sounded the alarm to congress in 1988 made a point of saying "the biggest worry isn't what we put in our cars, but what we put in our power plants". It is consumers and small businesses who use the electricity that these plants create, and account for the majority of energy waste in our society.
The Internet has enabled a freedom of information never seen before, and this is good. But with this freedom has come a loss of information organization and information integrity. Blogs and SEO allow anyone with a personal computer to publish content but there is no way for readers to understand where it came from, what motivates it, if it is correct, let alone if the sites it links to are safe to visit.
We urgently need to embrace savings technology - and be motivated to use it - yes it needs to be good technology (not scams) - yes it should save us a little money - if only we could spread good tips on energy saving in the same way that we follow the news, football, facebook or whatever other interest motivates us.
Our business model is to concentrate on providing you with accurate facts, and to allow you to interpret the results. We are not children, we are all responsible adults capable of thinking for ourselves. It is time that we put an end to smart marketing and information sound bites as the basis of our decisions, especially on the little things where we do not have the time or resource to be experts.
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