高海亮滨海:驾驭反馈循环的威力

Lineker

于2011-10-09 12:16:51翻译 | 已有157人浏览 | 有0人评论

反馈循环的产生前提相当简单：实时的向对方提供一些关于其行为动作的信息，然后给他们一个机会去改变这些行为，促使其朝着更优的方向发展

The premise of a feedback loop is simple: Provide people with information about their actions in real time, then give them a chance to change those actions, pushing them toward better behaviors. 

反馈循环的产生前提相当简单：实时的向对方提供一些关于其行为动作的信息，然后给他们一个机会去改变这些行为，促使其朝着更优的方向发展。

Photo: Kevin Van Aelst 

图片：Kevin Van Aelst 

In 2003, officials in Garden Grove, California, a community of 170,000 people wedged amid the suburban sprawl of Orange County, set out to confront a problem that afflicts most every town in America: drivers speeding through school zones.

加州的加登格罗夫（Garden Grove）是一个拥有17万居民的小城市，位于橘郡（Orange County）的市郊延伸地带。2003年，加登格罗夫的城市管理者们遭遇了几乎每一座美国城镇都无法避免的难题：司机在穿越学校所在区域时经常会超速行驶。

Local authorities had tried many tactics to get people to slow down. They replaced old speed limit signs with bright new ones to remind drivers of the 25-mile-an-hour limit during school hours. Police began ticketing speeding motorists during drop-off and pickup times. But these efforts had only limited success, and speeding cars continued to hit bicyclists and pedestrians in the school zones with depressing regularity.

为了让人们放慢车速，地方当局已经尝试了很多办法：他们将破旧的限速标识更换为明亮的崭新标牌，以提醒驾驶员在学校上课期间路过此地时应该把车速控制在每小时40公里以下；对于在放学和上学高峰期超速的司机，警察也会毫不犹豫的开出罚单。但即便如此，这些措施依然是收效甚微，从校区飞驰而过的汽车还是会隔三差五的撞上骑自行车的人或行人。

So city engineers decided to take another approach. In five Garden Grove school zones, they put up what are known as dynamic speed displays, or driver feedback signs: a speed limit posting coupled with a radar sensor attached to a huge digital readout announcing “Your Speed.”

无奈之下，城市管理者们决定采取另一种解决方式。他们在加登格罗夫的五个校区中设置了被称之为动态速度显示牌或驾驶员反馈标识的装置，这是一种带有雷达感应器的限速公告牌，感应器连在一块可以同步显示行驶速度的巨大数字终端上。

The signs were curious in a few ways. For one thing, they didn’t tell drivers anything they didn’t already know—there is, after all, a speedometer in every car. If a motorist wanted to know their speed, a glance at the dashboard would do it. For another thing, the signs used radar, which decades earlier had appeared on American roads as a talisman technology, reserved for police officers only. Now Garden Grove had scattered radar sensors along the side of the road like traffic cones. And the Your Speed signs came with no punitive follow-up—no police officer standing by ready to write a ticket. This defied decades of law-enforcement dogma, which held that most people obey speed limits only if they face some clear negative consequence for exceeding them.

这样的公告牌让所有人都觉得有些好奇。首先，公告牌并不能为驾驶员们提供什么新资讯——毕竟，每辆汽车上都安装了速度计。如果驾驶员想知道汽车的行驶速度，瞅一眼仪表盘就可以了。其次，这种利用雷达测速的公告牌早在几十年前都已经在美国的公路上出现了，而这项在当时被视为法宝的革新技术是专供交警使用的。虽然加登格罗夫当局在路边分散设置了一系列如同交通圆筒一般的雷达感应器，却不打算对违规者采取进一步的处罚措施——他们并没有在公告牌下安排交警执勤，以便随时开出罚单。这样的举动等于是直接否定了沿袭了几十年的执法教条：只有当面对无可辩驳的负面结果时，大多数人才会心甘情愿的去遵守限速规定。

In other words, officials in Garden Grove were betting that giving speeders redundant information with no consequence would somehow compel them to do something few of us are inclined to do: slow down.

换句话说，加登格罗夫当局等于是将宝押在这样一种假定之上：即向超速者提供不带任何惩罚性后果的冗余信息，会在一定程度上强迫他们作出近乎不可能的举动——减速。

The results fascinated and delighted the city officials. In the vicinity of the schools where the dynamic displays were installed, drivers slowed an average of 14 percent. Not only that, at three schools the average speed dipped below the posted speed limit. Since this experiment, Garden Grove has installed 10 more driver feedback signs. “Frankly, it’s hard to get people to slow down,” says Dan Candelaria, Garden Grove’s traffic engineer. “But these encourage people to do the right thing.”

然而，实际效果让市政官员们感到欣喜不已。在设置了动态显示牌的校区附近，驾驶员们的行车速度平均降低了14%。不仅如此，在三个校区内的车辆行驶速度都降至标识限速以下。取得明显效果以后，加登格罗夫当局又设置了十多处类似的驾驶员反馈标识。“说实话，要让司机把开车速度降下来真的很难，”加登格罗夫市的交通工程师丹·坎德拉利亚（Dan Candelaria）说。“但我们这样做是为了鼓励人们保留点责任感。”

In the years since the Garden Grove project began, radar technology has dropped steadily in price and Your Speed signs have proliferated on American roadways. Yet despite their ubiquity, the signs haven’t faded into the landscape like so many other motorist warnings. Instead, they’ve proven to be consistently effective at getting drivers to slow down—reducing speeds, on average, by about 10 percent, an effect that lasts for several miles down the road. Indeed, traffic engineers and safety experts consider them to be more effective at changing driving habits than a cop with a radar gun. Despite their redundancy, despite their lack of repercussions, the signs have accomplished what seemed impossible: They get us to let up on the gas.

自加登格罗夫市政当局开始实施该项规划以来的这几年里，雷达测速技术的价格呈现稳步下降的趋势，速度显示牌也如雨后春笋般的出现于美国各大公路两旁。虽然数量激增，但这种显示牌并没有与其他行车标识一样，只是沦为了公路旁的一道独特风景线，相反，它在规劝司机减慢行车速度上依然发挥着重要作用——事实证明，它能使车速平均降低10%左右，而且效果能持续数公里。在交通工程师和安全专家看来，与安排一位拿着雷达测速计的交通警在路边执勤相比，这种设置速度显示牌的做法更能改变驾车人的驾驶习惯。表面看似多余，也不存在后续的处罚措施，但它就是起到了原本看似不可能的效果：让司机们松开了油门。

The signs leverage what’s called a feedback loop, a profoundly effective tool for changing behavior. The basic premise is simple. Provide people with information about their actions in real time (or something close to it), then give them an opportunity to change those actions, pushing them toward better behaviors. Action, information, reaction. It’s the operating principle behind a home thermostat, which fires the furnace to maintain a specific temperature, or the consumption display in a Toyota Prius, which tends to turn drivers into so-called hypermilers trying to wring every last mile from the gas tank. But the simplicity of feedback loops is deceptive. They are in fact powerful tools that can help people change bad behavior patterns, even those that seem intractable. Just as important, they can be used to encourage good habits, turning progress itself into a reward. In other words, feedback loops change human behavior. And thanks to an explosion of new technology, the opportunity to put them into action in nearly every part of our lives is quickly becoming a reality.

这种被称之为反馈循环的标志杠杆是一种非常有效的工具，它能深刻改变人类的行为。反馈循环的基本前提相当简单：向对方提供一些关于其行为动作的实时信息（或类似信息），然后给他们一个机会去改变这些行为，促使其朝着更优的方向发展。行为，信息，反应。它其实就是家用恒温调节器或丰田普锐斯上油耗显示器的工作原理，前者是通过加热来维持特定温度，而后者则是通过榨干油箱里每一滴油的潜能让驾驶员变成一个惜油如金之人。但反馈循环的简明易懂只是一种假象，事实上，它是一种非常强大的工具，能帮助人们改变不良的行为模式，甚至某些看似无法根治的痼疾。同样，反馈循环也能用来激励人们养成好习惯，促使进步自化为某种奖励。归根到底，也就是说，反馈循环能够彻底改变人类的行为。当今世界，各种新技术层出不穷，在它们的帮助下，将各种反馈循环置于人类形形色色的日常行为之中正渐渐成为现实。

A feedback loop involves four distinct stages. First comes the data: A behavior must be measured, captured, and stored. This is the evidence stage. Second, the information must be relayed to the individual, not in the raw-data form in which it was captured but in a context that makes it emotionally resonant. This is the relevance stage. But even compelling information is useless if we don’t know what to make of it, so we need a third stage: consequence. The information must illuminate one or more paths ahead. And finally, the fourth stage: action. There must be a clear moment when the individual can recalibrate a behavior, make a choice, and act. Then that action is measured, and the feedback loop can run once more, every action stimulating new behaviors that inch us closer to our goals.

一个完整的反馈循环拥有四个不同的阶段。首先是数据：对行为进行量化、俘获并存储。这一步相当于质证阶段。其次，行为信息必须转发给行为个体，但这些信息不是以原始数据的形式出现，而是以一种能引发情感共鸣的语境方式反馈给个体。这一步相当于关联阶段。但如果行为个体不知道该如何对信息作出反应，即便强制性的信息转发亦是无济于事，因此我们需要进入第三个阶段：推论，也就是说，信息必须为个体阐明一条或多条前进的路径。最后，第四步：行为。个体修正行为、作出抉择、再次行动都必须存在某个明晰的瞬间。修正后的行动可以被再次量化，纳入反馈循环再运行一次，每一次行动都会激励新行为的出现，使个体距离目标越来越近。

This basic framework has been shaped and refined by thinkers and researchers for ages. In the 18th century, engineers developed regulators and governors to modulate steam engines and other mechanical systems, an early application of feedback loops that later became codified into control theory, the engineering discipline behind everything from aerospace to robotics. The mathematician Norbert Wiener expanded on this work in the 1940s, devising the field of cybernetics, which analyzed how feedback loops operate in machinery and electronics and explored how those principles might be broadened to human systems.

多年以来，这个基本框架一直在被形形色色的思想者和研究者所发展和完善。为了调节蒸汽发动机和其他机械系统，十八世纪的工程师们发明了调节阀和调速器，这种反馈循环的早期应用后来逐渐演变成为了控制理论，这种理论相当于工程学的基本原则，从航空航天到机器人学，所有领域都离不开控制理论。数学家诺伯特·维纳（Norbert Wiener）在上世纪四十年代对控制论进行了进一步的拓展，他详细分析了机械和电子领域中的反馈循环是如何运转的，并深入探讨了这些原理在经过深化以后如何被应用到人类自身的系统之中。

Over the past 40 years, feedback loops have been thoroughly researched and validated in psychology, epidemiology, military strategy, environmental studies, engineering, and economics.

在过去的四十年中，反馈循环在诸多领域如心理学、流行病学、军事战略学、环境研究、工程学以及经济学中都得到了彻底的研究和证实。

Illustration: Ulla Puggaard

插图：Ulla Puggaard

The potential of the feedback loop to affect behavior was explored in the 1960s, most notably in the work of Albert Bandura, a Stanford University psychologist and pioneer in the study of behavior change and motivation. Drawing on several education experiments involving children, Bandura observed that giving individuals a clear goal and a means to evaluate their progress toward that goal greatly increased the likelihood that they would achieve it. He later expanded this notion into the concept of self-efficacy, which holds that the more we believe we can meet a goal, the more likely we will do so. In the 40 years since Bandura’s early work, feedback loops have been thoroughly researched and validated in psychology, epidemiology, military strategy, environmental studies, engineering, and economics. (In typical academic fashion, each discipline tends to reinvent the methodology and rephrase the terminology, but the basic framework remains the same.) Feedback loops are a common tool in athletic training plans, executive coaching strategies, and a multitude of other self-improvement programs (though some are more true to the science than others).

在上世纪六十年代，就已经有研究者对反馈循环的行为影响特性进行了探索，其中以斯坦福大学心理学家兼行为变化和动机研究领域的先锋人物阿尔伯特·班杜拉（Albert Bandura）的工作最为著名。通过对儿童进行若干次的教育试验后，班杜拉发现，赋予个体以明晰的目标和相应的评估方法会极大的增强其成功完成既定目标的可能性。随后，他将实验结果进一步扩展为自我效能（self-efficacy）概念，即我们对达成目标的信念越强，成功的可能性也就越大。自班杜拉的早期研究工作以来，反馈循环在诸多领域如心理学、流行病学、军事战略学、环境研究、工程学以及经济学中都得到了彻底的研究和证实（由于学术风尚的缘故，反馈循环的方法论和表述方式在每一门学科中都被改头换面，但其基本框架依然保持一致）。反馈循环是运动训练计划、执行教练策略和大量其他自我完善规划中的普适工具。

Despite the volume of research and a proven capacity to affect human behavior, we don’t often use feedback loops in everyday life. Blame this on two factors: Until now, the necessary catalyst—personalized data—has been an expensive commodity. Health spas, athletic training centers, and self-improvement workshops all traffic in fastidiously culled data at premium rates. Outside of those rare realms, the cornerstone information has been just too expensive to come by. As a technologist might put it, personalized data hasn’t really scaled.

尽管学者们针对反馈循环作了大量的研究，而且其影响人类行为的能力亦得到了证明，但在日常生活中我们并没有频繁使用该工具。这种局面主要归咎于两个因素：首先，到目前为止，反馈循环中必要的刺激因素即个性化数据的获取依然不易。健康疗养机构、运动训练中心和自我完善研讨班只对某些涉及保险费率的片面采集数据感兴趣。除了这些少数领域外，类似的基础信息因代价高昂而难以获得。也就是说，个体化的数据采集还没有形成规模。

Second, collecting data on the cheap is cumbersome. Although the basic idea of self-tracking has been available to anyone willing to put in the effort, few people stick with the routine of toting around a notebook, writing down every Hostess cupcake they consume or every flight of stairs they climb. It’s just too much bother. The technologist would say that capturing that data involves too much friction. As a result, feedback loops are niche tools, for the most part, rewarding for those with the money, willpower, or geeky inclination to obsessively track their own behavior, but impractical for the rest of us.

其次，不费吹灰之力得来的数据又难以管理。尽管所有人都愿意将自我跟踪的基本理念付诸实施，但很少人会坚持随身携带笔记本，记下自己吃了几块蛋糕或爬了多少级台阶等等。这样做太麻烦了，而且专家会告诉你这样收集来的数据会存在很多分歧之处。因此，这样的反馈循环多半会变成一个小范围内适用的工具，虽然它会以金钱、意志力或形成怪异偏好来回馈沉迷于追踪自我行为的个体，但对于其他人来说，这种反馈循环毫无实用价值。

Illustration: Leo Jung

插图：Leo Jung

That’s quickly changing because of one essential technology: sensors. Adding sensors to the feedback equation helps solve problems of friction and scale. They automate the capture of behavioral data, digitizing it so it can be readily crunched and transformed as necessary. And they allow passive measurement, eliminating the need for tedious active monitoring.

但一项关键技术即传感器的出现很快改变了这种现状。在反馈方程中添加传感器有助于解决分歧和规模方面的难题。它们会自动俘获行为数据，并对其进行数字化处理和必要的转换。传感器可以用于被动测量，从而避免了冗长的主动监测过程。

In the past two or three years, the plunging price of sensors has begun to foster a feedback-loop revolution. Just as Your Speed signs have been adopted worldwide because the cost of radar technology keeps dropping, other feedback loops are popping up everywhere because sensors keep getting cheaper and better at monitoring behavior and capturing data in all sorts of environments. These new, less expensive devices include accelerometers (which measure motion), GPS sensors (which track location), and inductance sensors (which measure electric current). Accelerometers have dropped to less than $1 each—down from as much as $20 a decade ago—which means they can now be built into tennis shoes, MP3 players, and even toothbrushes. Radio-frequency ID chips are being added to prescription pill bottles, student ID cards, and casino chips. And inductance sensors that were once deployed only in heavy industry are now cheap and tiny enough to be connected to residential breaker boxes, letting consumers track their home’s entire energy diet.

在过去的两至三年间，传感器直线下跌的价格已经开始孕育一场反馈循环的革命。正如雷达测速技术成本的持续下跌而导致速度显示牌在全世界范围内被广泛运用，其他反馈循环如雨后春笋般的涌现也得益于传感器不仅变得越来越便宜，而且可以在各类环境中发挥行为监控和数据收集功能。这些新颖廉价设备包括加速度计（运动测量）、GPS感应器（定位）和电感传感器（电流测量）。加速度计的价格已经从从十年前的每台二十美元降至现在的不到一美元，这意味着我们在网球鞋、MP3播放器甚至牙刷里都可以装上这玩意儿。而处方药瓶、学生证和赌场筹码上也装上了射频ID芯片。以前只在重工业领域使用的电感传感器如今变得既廉价又小巧，现在它被连在民宅的电开关箱上，让消费者可以监控家中的电能消耗情况。

Of course, technology has been tracking what people do for years. Call-center agents have been monitored closely since the 1990s, and the nation’s tractor-trailer fleets have long been equipped with GPS and other location sensors—not just to allow drivers to follow their routes but so that companies can track their cargo and the drivers. But those are top-down, Big Brother techniques. The true power of feedback loops is not to control people but to give them control. It’s like the difference between a speed trap and a speed feedback sign—one is a game of gotcha, the other is a gentle reminder of the rules of the road. The ideal feedback loop gives us an emotional connection to a rational goal.

当然，传感技术的使用已颇有些年头了。从上世纪九十年代开始，这项技术就被用来监视呼叫中心的工作人员，而美国的货运拖车车队也一直装备有GPS和其他定位传感器——除了方便驾驶员沿既定路线行驶外，货运公司也可以通过这些装置来追踪货物和驾驶员的动向。但这些应用技术都带有掌控和专制性质。反馈循环的真正价值并不体现在控制能力上，而在于它赋予了人们以控制权。这就像车速监视区与速度反馈标识之间的区别——一个是钓鱼执法，另一种则是道路规则的善意提醒。理想的反馈循环会让我们以一种感性的方式达成理性目标。

And today, their promise couldn’t be greater. The intransigence of human behavior has emerged as the root of most of the world’s biggest challenges. Witness the rise in obesity, the persistence of smoking, the soaring number of people who have one or more chronic diseases. Consider our problems with carbon emissions, where managing personal energy consumption could be the difference between a climate under control and one beyond help. And feedback loops aren’t just about solving problems. They could create opportunities. Feedback loops can improve how companies motivate and empower their employees, allowing workers to monitor their own productivity and set their own schedules. They could lead to lower consumption of precious resources and more productive use of what we do consume. They could allow people to set and achieve better-defined, more ambitious goals and curb destructive behaviors, replacing them with positive actions. Used in organizations or communities, they can help groups work together to take on more daunting challenges. In short, the feedback loop is an age-old strategy revitalized by state-of-the-art technology. As such, it is perhaps the most promising tool for behavioral change to have come along in decades.

反馈循环在当下的价值变得越来越举足轻重。人类行为的顽固性已经逐渐成为诸多世界性难题的产生根源。肥胖问题，烟瘾难以戒除，以及身患一种或多种慢性疾病的人越来越多，这是人类自身的健康问题。再想想二氧化碳的排放问题，气候变化是变得可控还是恶化到无法挽救的境地取决于个体能耗能否得到掌控。反馈循环不仅可以用来解决问题，它还能创造机遇。一些公司能够利用反馈循环来激励和改进员工的能动性，职员们也能利用它来监督自己的生产效率，以及安排日程表。在反馈循环的帮助下，人们不仅能够设定并达成更为明确更具野心的目标，而且还可以抑制破坏性的行为，变得积极主动起来。而在机构或社群内部推广反馈循环则会有助于群体协作，以应对难度更大的挑战。简而言之，反馈循环是一种被尖端现代科技注入活力的古老策略。鉴于此，我们甚至可以断言，在未来的几十年中，反馈循环将可能是最有价值的行为变革工具之一。

How a Feedback Loop Works

反馈循环的工作机理

A modified traffic sign can have a profound effect on drivers’ behavior. Here’s what happens.

改进的交通标志能够对司机的行为产生深刻影响，下图即展示了这种作用细节。

In 2006, Shwetak Patel, then a graduate student in computer science at Georgia Tech, was working on a problem: How could technology help provide remote care for the elderly? The obvious approach would be to install cameras and motion detectors throughout a home, so that observers could see when somebody fell or became sick. Patel found those methods unsophisticated and impractical. “Installing cameras or motion sensors everywhere is unreasonably expensive,” he says. “It might work in theory, but it just won’t happen in practice. So I wondered what would give us the same information and be reasonably priced and easy to deploy. I found those really interesting constraints.”

2006年，乔治亚理工学院计算机科学专业一位名叫施威达克·帕特尔（Shwetak Patel）的研究生一直在思考这样一个问题：如何让现代技术在老年人远程监护领域发挥出应有的价值来？监护者可以在屋子里到处安装摄像头和运动监测器，一旦有人跌倒或生病，他们就可以即时作出反应，乍看起来，这似乎是最简便有效的方法，但帕特尔发现这样的设置不仅过于简单，而且不具实用价值。“到处设置摄像头和运动监测器的成本非常昂贵，”他说。“它只是在理论上可行，实际不太行得通。因此，我想搞清楚还有没有其他的方法，既能为我们提供相同的信息，成本又不会太高，而且便于安装。渐渐的，我发现这些约束条件相当有趣。”

The answer, Patel realized, is that every home emits something called voltage noise. Think of it as a steady hum in the electrical wires that varies depending on what systems are drawing power. If there were some way to disaggregate this noise, it might be possible to deliver much the same information as cameras and motion sensors. Lights going on and off, for instance, would mean that someone had moved from room to room. If a blender were left on, that might signal that someone had fallen—or had forgotten about the blender, perhaps indicating dementia. If we could hear electricity usage, Patel thought, we could know what was happening inside the house.

帕特尔意识到，家家户户都存在的电压噪声也许可以用来解决上述难题。电压噪声是一种存在于电线中的持续嗡嗡声，它随着电器系统的电能消耗情况而发生改变。如果我们能找到某些能够分解这种噪声的方法，它就能够用来传输原本需要摄像头和运动监测器来传输的信息。举例来说，开灯和关灯意味着有人从一个房间进入了另一个房间；如果搅拌器一直在开着，那可能表明有人摔倒——或忘了关上它，后者也许是痴呆的暗号。帕特尔觉得，如果我们能监控电能的使用情况，就能了解房间里所发生的状况。

A nifty idea, but how to make it happen? The problem wasn’t measuring the voltage noise; that’s easily tracked with a few sensors. The challenge was translating the cacophony of electromagnetic interference into the symphony of signals given off by specific appliances and devices and lights. Finding that pattern amid the noise became the focus of Patel’s PhD work, and in a few years he had both his degree and his answer: a stack of algorithms that could discern a blender from a light switch from a television set and so on. All this data could be captured not by sensors in every electrical outlet throughout the house but through a single device plugged into a single outlet.

想法非常棒，但如何付诸实施呢？难点并不在于测量电压噪声——随便设置几个传感器就能轻易完成跟踪过程；关键问题在于要将电磁干扰的不和谐之音转译成特定电器设备所发出的信号交响乐。在噪声之中找出某种固有模式成为帕特尔在攻读博士学位期间的研究重点，他花费了数年时间终于发明了一大堆算法，利用这些算法我们可以通过电压噪声就能将搅拌器与电灯开关以及电视等其他电器设备区分开来。此外，我们亦无需在房间中的所有插座上都装上传感器，而只需在电器设备所使用的插座上进行针对性的安装就能完成数据收集工作。

This, Patel soon realized, went way beyond elder care. His approach could inform ordinary consumers, in real time, about where the energy they paid for every month was going. “We kind of stumbled across this stuff,” Patel says. “But we realized that, combined with data on the house’s overall draw on power”—which can be measured through a second sensor easily installed at the circuit box—”we were getting really great information about resource consumption in the home. And that could be more than interesting information. It could encourage behavior change.”

帕特尔很快意识到，这项技术的应用范围超出了老年护理领域，它能够用来实时通知消费者他们每个月所消耗电能的去向。“我们也是偶然间发现这种用途的，”帕特尔说。“但我们意识到，将这些数据与总用电量”——可以通过安装在电路盒中的次级传感器来测量——“合并在一起，我们就能获取大量关于家居电能消耗情况的具体信息。这些信息非常有用，因为它们能够激励人们去改变某些不良的用电习惯。”

By 2008, Patel had started a new job in the computer science and engineering departments at the University of Washington, and his idea had been turned into the startup Zensi. At Washington, he focused on devising similar techniques to monitor home consumption of water and gas. The solutions were even more elegant, perhaps, than the one for monitoring electricity. A transducer affixed to an outdoor spigot can detect changes in water pressure that correspond to the resident’s water usage. That data can then be disaggregated to distinguish a leaky toilet from an over-indulgent bather. And a microphone sensor on a gas meter listens to changes in the regulator to determine how much gas is consumed.

2008年，帕特尔在华盛顿大学计算机科学与工程系谋到了一份新差事，此外，他还创立了一家名为Zensi的公司。在华盛顿，帕特尔开始将注意力放在类似技术的开发上，着力去解决家庭用水用电监控方面的难题。相应的解决方案甚至比先前的电流监测还要更简洁：安装在户外水龙头上的传感器能够探测水压的变化，而水压又与住户的用水量紧密联系在一起。相应的数据又能被分解开来，以便对厕所的漏水或浴室的过度用水进行区分。用气方面，装在气量计上的麦克风传感器可以监听调节阀的变化，以此来确定有多少燃气被消耗掉。

Last year, consumer electronics company Belkin acquired Zensi and made energy conservation a centerpiece of its corporate strategy, with feedback loops as the guiding principle. Belkin has begun modestly, with a device called the Conserve Insight. It’s an outlet adapter that gives consumers a close read of the power used by one select appliance: Plug it into a wall socket and then plug an appliance or gadget into it and a small display shows how much energy the device is consuming, in both watts and dollars. It’s a window onto how energy is actually used, but it’s only a proof-of-concept prototype of the more ambitious product, based on Patel’s PhD work, that Belkin will begin beta-testing in Chicago later this year with an eye toward commercial release in 2013. The company calls it Zorro.

去年，家用电子产品公司贝尔金（Belkin）收购了Zensi，并将能源节约定位为公司发展的核心战略，同时以反馈循环作为公司的指导方针。贝尔金的起步相当谨慎，它先是推出了一款名为Conserve Insight的装置，该装置是一种能让消费者查看相应设备用电情况的插座适配器：将Conserve Insight插在壁式插座上，再连上用电设备，它上面一块小小的显示屏就能显示该设备消耗了多少电能，以及这些电能价值几何。Conserve Insight相当于查看电能实际使用状况的一面窗口，但它仅仅是个概念验证式的原型产品。在帕特尔攻读博士期间相关研究成果的支持下，贝尔金已经开发出另一款更具野心的产品，这款名为Zorro的装置将于今年年底在芝加哥展开β试验，预计会在2013年进行正式销售。

At first glance, the Zorro is just another so-called smart meter, not that different from the boxes that many power companies have been installing in consumers’ homes, with a vague promise that the meters will educate citizens and provide better data to the utility. To the surprise of the utility companies, though, these smart meters have been greeted with hostility in some communities. A small but vocal number of customers object to being monitored, while others worry that the radiation from RFID transmitters is unhealthy (though this has been measured at infinitesimal levels).

乍看上去，Zorro和一般消费者家里安装的所谓智能电表没什么区别。很多电力公司都会含糊的承诺说，智能电表能培养公民的节电意识，而且还可以提供更多有用的数据，但出乎他们意料，在不少社区，智能电表并不受待见。有少数消费者对电力公司的监视行为提出抗议，还有些人担心来自射频识别信号传送器的辐射会影响人体健康（事实上，这种辐射的水平极低）。

Politics aside, in pure feedback terms smart meters fail on at least two levels. For one, the information goes to the utility first, rather than directly to the consumer. For another, most smart meters aren’t very smart; they typically measure overall household consumption, not how much power is being consumed by which specific device or appliance. In other words, they are a broken feedback loop.

撇开政治因素不谈，从反馈的纯学术层面来看，智能电表至少存在两个方面的设计误区。首先，电表所获得的用电信息是面向电力公司的，而非是直接传达给消费者；其次，大多数智能电表并不智能，它们通常只是测定总耗电量，无法测定特定的设备或电器所消耗的具体电量。换句话说，这些电表只能算是缺损的反馈循环。

Belkin’s device avoids these pitfalls by giving the data directly to consumers and delivering it promptly and continuously. “Real-time feedback is key to conservation,” says Kevin Ashton, Zensi’s former CEO who took over Belkin’s Conserve division after the acquisition. “There’s a visceral impact when you see for yourself how much your toaster is costing you.”

但贝尔金的Zorro装置避免了这些缺陷，它可以将数据直接反馈给消费者，而且可以实现快速和持续传输。“实时反馈是节省的关键，”Zensi公司的前任CEO凯文·艾什顿（Kevin Ashton）说，在并购之后他成为了贝尔金节约部门的主管。“只有亲眼看到家里的烤箱在消耗多少电能才会形成巨大的心理冲击。”

The Zorro is just the first of several Belkin products that Ashton believes will put feedback loops into effect throughout the home. Ashton worked on RFID chips at MIT in the late 1990s and lays claim to coining the phrase “Internet of Things,” meaning a world of interconnected, sensor-laden devices and objects. He predicts that home sensors will one day inform choices in all aspects of our lives. “We’re consuming so many things without thinking about them—energy, plastic, paper, calories. I can envision a ubiquitous sensor network, a platform for real-time feedback that will enhance the comfort, security, and control of our lives.”

艾什顿认为Zorro并不是第一款将反馈循环效应应用于家居生活的贝尔金产品。上世纪九十年代末，当时还在麻省理工的艾什顿就一直在研究射频识别芯片，他甚至创造出了“物联网（Internet of Things）”的说法，物联网是指一个各种设备和物体在传感器的帮助下进行互联的世界。他预言家用传感器有朝一日将会为人类生活的方方面面提供选择。“我们正在消耗着很多自己并不了解的事物，如能源、塑料、纸张和热量等。可以想象，一个无处不在的传感器网络，一个可以进行实时反馈的平台，肯定能够让人类的生活变得更加舒适、安全和可控。”

As a starting point for a consumer products company, that’s not half bad.

作为一个消费产品公司，这样的起点可以说是非常的棒。

If there is one problem in medicine that confounds doctors, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies alike, it’s noncompliance, the unfriendly term for patients who don’t follow doctors’ orders. Most vexing are those who don’t take their medications as prescribed—which, it turns out, is pretty much most of us. Studies have shown that about half of patients who are prescribed medication take their pills as directed. For drugs like statins, which must be used for years, the rate is even worse, dropping to around 30 percent after a year. (Since the effect of these drugs can be invisible, the thinking goes, patients don’t detect any benefit.) Research has found that noncompliance adds $100 billion annually to US health care costs and leads to 125,000 unnecessary deaths from cardiovascular diseases alone every year. And it can be blamed almost entirely on human foibles—people failing to do what they know they should.

不遵医嘱一直是医学领域的一个老大难问题，这种不友善的行为总是困扰着医生、保险公司和制药公司，不遵医嘱指的是病人不遵循医生的嘱咐。最令人头疼的对象莫过于那些不按规定服药的病人了——但事实上，这种错误我们中的大多数人都犯过。研究显示，约有一半的病人是直接服用处方药物。有些病人需要服用诸如他汀类这种需要连续使用数年的药物，对于他们来说，不遵医嘱的比例则更为严重，一般一年之后这一比例才降至30%。（因为这些药物的效果是不可见的，因此，按上述情况发展下去，病人不会觉察到任何病情改善的迹象。）研究证明，不遵医嘱行为每年会让美国的医保开支多出1000亿美元，仅是心血管疾病一项每年就导致了125000例不必要的死亡。如此糟糕的局面几乎可以完全归咎于人类自身的小小缺点——人们总是做不好那些自己本知道该如何去完成的事情。

David Rose is a perfect example of this. He has a family history of heart disease. Now 44, he began taking medication for high blood pressure a few years ago, making him not so different from the nearly one-third of Americans with hypertension. Where Rose is exceptional is in his capacity to do something about noncompliance. He has a knack for inventing beautiful, engaging, alluring objects that get people to do things like take their pills.

大卫·罗斯（David Rose）的经历就是绝佳例证。现年四十四岁的他患有家族性的心脏病，几年前他开始服用治疗高血压的药物。与将近三分之一患有高血压的美国人相比，罗斯的病例并非是什么特例，但他的特殊之处在于能够有效克服不遵医嘱的坏毛病。罗斯发明了很多奇妙实用的装置去督促人们完成诸如服药这样的小事。

A decade ago, Rose, whose stylish glasses and soft-spoken manner bring to mind a college music teacher, started a company called Ambient Devices. His most famous product is the Orb, a translucent sphere that turns different colors to reflect different information inputs. If your stocks go down, it might glow red; if it snows, it might glow white, and so on, depending on what information you tell the Orb you are interested in. It’s a whimsical product and is still available for purchase online. But as far as Rose is concerned, the Orb was merely a prelude to his next company, Vitality, and its marquee product: the GlowCap.

戴着时尚眼镜且说话温和的罗斯总会让人不禁联想起大学里温文尔雅的音乐老师来。十年前，他创办了一家名为Ambient Devices的公司，Orb是该公司最著名的产品，它是一个能够通过变色来反映信息输入的半透明球体。如果你的股票下跌，它就会发出红光；如果天下雪了，它则会发出白光，它所发出光的颜色取决于使用者告知它自己所感兴趣的对象。这是一种怪异的商品，现在还能在线购买到。但对于罗斯而言，Orb只不过是自己下一家公司Vitality及其龙头产品GlowCap的前奏而已。

A Feedback Loop for Every Goal

适用于任何目标的反馈循环

Rypple

Rypple

Work Better Rypple’s online platform helps workers give and receive feedback. Picture it as Facebook for the office: Users can set up private projects, post comments, make their goals public, and even assign badges to one another’s profiles. Supervisors can use it to track the progress of their employees, and there’s a tool for coaching workers and managers.

高效工作 Rypple的在线平台可以帮助员工给予和接受反馈。它就相当于办公室里的Facebook：使用者可以设置私人项目，发表评论，让工作目标公开化，为其他使用者的个人简介分配标识。管理员可以利用该平台在追踪雇员们的工作进程，同时平台上还搭配了用于训练员工和管理者的工具。

Zeo

Zeo

Sleep Better Zeo’s headband measures the brainwaves that are correlated with sleep quality, and a bedside monitor presents users with a score in the morning. The display also shows the amount of time spent in various sleep cycles and how long it took you to fall asleep. If you’re sleeping poorly, Zeo’s online tools will ask you questions—Do your kids sleep in your bed? Do you have pets? Do you exercise?—then offer up strategies for better sleep.

睡得更香 Zeo公司开发的这款头带可以检测与睡眠质量有关的脑波，床边监护仪可以在早晨向使用者展示相应的睡眠质量打分。它也可以显示多个不同睡眠周期的时间，以及使用者用了多长时间入睡。如果你的睡眠质量很差，Zeo的在线工具会询问你一些问题——你和孩子同睡吗？你养宠物吗？平时锻炼身体吗？——然后提供相应的解决方案，让你获得更好的睡眠。

Belkin Conserve Insight

Belkin Conserve Insight

Conserver Better Belkin makes a simple plug-in device that measures the power consumed by any appliance. It then translates that into cash burned and carbon emitted. The idea is to help consumers budget their energy use by showing them how much their electronics cost.

更节能 Belkin公司开发出一款简易的外接设备，可以检测出任何电器的耗电量。它会将耗电量转化为现金损失以及碳排放。通过展示电费支出将有助于消费者对电能使用情况进行预算。

GreenRoad

GreenRoad

Drive Better GreenRoad’s in-vehicle display uses GPS and accelerometers to let drivers spot and correct risky or fuel- inefficient driving habits in real time. Red, yellow, and green lights on the dash warn drivers when they’re making too many dangerous moves—like accelerating into turns or stopping suddenly. (The data is also posted online so supervisors can review employees’ driving and see if certain routes or shifts are more hazardous for their drivers.)

顺畅行车 GreenRoad的车载显示装置利用GPS和速度计，来帮助司机实时识别和更正那些危险或耗油的驾驶方式。当司机过于频繁的做出危险动作——如加速转弯或急停车时，仪表盘上的红、黄和绿灯就会发出警告。（数据也可以连线，这样监管者就能回顾员工们的驾驶情况，检查某些行车路线或换班是否会对司机造成更大的危险性。）

GreenGoose

GreenGoose

Liver Better GreenGoose uses wireless sensors and simple game mechanics to encourage behaviors like brushing your teeth, riding your bike, and walking your dog. Users get points as rewards for their everyday actions and bonus points for consistency. Starting this fall, people will be able to use those points in simple online games.

完美生活 GreenGoose利用无线感应器和简单的游戏机制来鼓励诸如刷牙、骑自行车或遛狗这样的良性行为。使用者会因为日常行为而得到分数奖励，持之以恒还能获得加分。这款产品将于今秋面世，届时，用户可以使用积攒的分数来玩一些简单的在线游戏。

The device is simple. When a patient is prescribed a medication, a physician or pharmacy provides a GlowCap to go on top of the pill bottle, replacing the standard childproof cap. The GlowCap, which comes with a plug-in unit that Rose calls a night-light, connects to a database that knows the patient’s particular dosage directions—say, two pills twice a day, at 8 am and 8 pm. When 8 am rolls around, the GlowCap and the night-light start to pulse with a gentle orange light. A few minutes later, if the pill bottle isn’t opened, the light pulses a little more urgently. A few minutes more and the device begins to play a melody—not an annoying buzz or alarm. Finally, if more time elapses (the intervals are adjustable), the patient receives a text message or a recorded phone call reminding them to pop the GlowCap. The overall effect is a persistent feedback loop urging patients to take their meds.

这种装置的原理很简单。当病人开好处方药以后，医生或药店会在药品的瓶盖上放上GlowCap装置，以替换标准的儿童保护瓶盖。GlowCap带有一个罗斯称之为夜明灯的输入单元，该单元与一个掌握了病人特定服药剂量指示——如一天两次，一次早晨八点，一次晚上八点，每次两片——的数据库相连。早晨八点一到，GlowCap和夜明灯便开始发出带有微黄色的脉冲光。几分钟以后，如果药品还没被打开，光脉冲会变得更为紧迫一些。再过几分钟，装置就会开始奏出乐声——但不是那种烦人的蜂鸣或警报声。最终，如果病人还是没有打开瓶盖（间隔时间可以调整），他们就会收到文本信息或录音电话提醒。这套装置的总体效果相当于一个催促病人服药的持久反馈循环。

These nudges have proven to be remarkably effective. In 2010, Partners HealthCare and Harvard Medical School conducted a study that gave GlowCaps to 140 patients on hypertension medications; a control group received nonactivated GlowCap bottles. After three months, adherence in the control group had declined to less than 50 percent, the same dismal rate observed in countless other studies. But patients using GlowCaps did remarkably better: More than 80 percent of them took their pills, a rate that lasted for the duration of the six-month study.

这些催促起来没完没了的装置已经被证实的确效果显著。2010年，Partners HealthCare公司与哈佛医学院开展了一项联合研究，他们在140位病人的抗高血压药物上安装了GlowCap装置；对照组病人使用的是没有激活的GlowCap药瓶。三个月以后，对照组病人按时服药的比例降至不足50%，很多类似研究中亦出现了令人揪心的相同局面。相比之下，使用GlowCap装置的病人其服药状况则要乐观许多：有超过80%的病人按时服药，而且六个月的研究期间一直维持着这样的比例。

The power of the device can perhaps be explained by the fact that the GlowCap incorporates several schools of behavioral change. Vitality has experimented with charging consumers for the product, drawing on the behavioral-economics theory that people are more willing to use something they’ve paid for. But in other circumstances the company has given users a financial reward for taking their medication, using a carrot-and-stick methodology. Different models work for different people, Rose says. “We use reminders and social incentives and financial incentives—whatever we can,” he says. “We want to provide enough feedback so that it’s complementary to people’s lives, but not so much that you can’t handle the onslaught.”

事实上，GlowCap融合了多种行为变化领域的研究成果，这也许正是这套装置效果明显的根本原因。一般说来，人们更愿意使用那些他们付钱购买的东西，因此Vitality公司曾根据这条行为经济学法则，通过向消费者收费来展开产品试用试验。但在某些情形下，公司也会采取胡萝卜加大棒的方法，即对药物使用者进行物质奖励，罗斯表示，策略因人而异。“我们会使用提醒装置，也会利用社会激励和经济刺激——我们会用上各种方法，”他说。“我们希望能提供足够的反馈，好对人们的生活作出有益的补充，而不是多到让人无法应付。”

Here Rose grapples with an essential challenge of feedback loops: Make them too passive and you’ll lose your audience as the data blurs into the background of everyday life. Make them too intrusive and the data turns into noise, which is easily ignored. Borrowing a concept from cognitive psychology called pre-attentive processing, Rose aims for a sweet spot between these extremes, where the information is delivered unobtrusively but noticeably. The best sort of delivery device “isn’t cognitively loading at all,” he says. “It uses colors, patterns, angles, speed—visual cues that don’t distract us but remind us.” This creates what Rose calls “enchantment.” Enchanted objects, he says, don’t register as gadgets or even as technology at all, but rather as friendly tools that beguile us into action. In short, they’re magical.

反馈循环中存在一个基本难点：如果你构造的反馈循环过于被动，随着数据因日常生活背景而变得模糊，你会渐渐失去自己的用户群；但如果反馈循环侵入性过强，数据就会转变为很容易被忽略的噪音。但罗斯一直在试图解决这个难题。他从认知心理学领域借鉴了一种被称之为前意识处理（pre-attentive processing）的概念，希望能从这些极端情形之间找到一个最佳平衡点，即让信息悄然却又能引起足够注意的被传递出去。最好的信息传递策略“并不是人们通常所认为的那种填鸭式灌输，”他说。“它需要用上色彩、图案、角度和速度等种种视觉提示，这些提示并不是要让你分心，而是为了提醒你。”这样的策略会产生罗斯谓之的“魔法”。他表示，这些拥有神奇魔力的物品根本不会以小装置乃至技术手段的形式出现在我们面前，相反，它们更像是一类会哄骗我们付诸积极行动的友善工具。简而言之，就是它们会施展魔法。

This approach to information delivery is a radical departure from how our health care system usually works. Conventional wisdom holds that medical information won’t be heeded unless it sets off alarms. Instead of glowing orbs, we’re pummeled with FDA cautions and Surgeon General warnings and front-page reports, all of which serve to heighten our anxiety about our health. This fear-based approach can work—for a while. But fear, it turns out, is a poor catalyst for sustained behavioral change. After all, biologically our fear response girds us for short-term threats. If nothing threatening actually happens, the fear dissipates. If this happens too many times, we end up simply dismissing the alarms.

这种信息传递的方式彻底背离了医疗系统的寻常运作方式。传统观点认为，患者的医疗信息不需要被过多关注，除非它触发了警报。相对于会发光的orb装置，我们更关注的是来自FDA和卫生总署的警告信息以及头版头条的研究报告，这些信息可以提升我们对健康问题的焦虑。这种基于恐惧的信息传递方式也会产生效果——但只是暂时的。恐惧是一种效力极差的催化剂，它难以维持长时间的行为变化。毕竟，从生物学的角度来看，恐惧反应只能让人类避开短期威胁。如果最终并未产生任何危险，恐惧感就会消散。如果类似情形多次重复出现，我们最终就会放松警惕。

It’s worth noting here how profoundly difficult it is for most people to improve their health. Consider: Self-directed smoking-cessation programs typically work for perhaps 5 percent of participants, and weight-loss programs are considered effective if people lose as little as 5 percent of their body weight. Part of the problem is that so much in our lives—the foods we eat, the ads we see, the things our culture celebrates—is driven by feedback loops that sustain bad behaviors. But we can counterprogram this onslaught with another feedback loop, increasing our odds of changing course.

值得注意的是，对于大多数人来说，改善自己的健康水平都是一件非常困难的事。例如，自主戒烟计划通常只会对5%的受试者产生约束效果，而只有减掉至少5%体重的减肥计划才能被视为有效。问题的部分原因在于我们生活中的很多方面——我们吃的食物，看的广告，我们文化中所歌颂的那些东西——都是由维持不良行为的反馈循环所驱动。但我们可以通过另一类反馈循环来对抗这种一边倒的局面，并以此来增加我们行为改变的成功几率。

Though GlowCaps improved compliance by an astonishing 40 percent, feedback loops more typically improve outcomes by about 10 percent compared to traditional methods. That 10 percent figure is surprisingly persistent; it turns up in everything from home energy monitors to smoking cessation programs to those Your Speed signs. At first glance, 10 percent may not seem like a lot. After all, if you’re 250 pounds and obese, losing 25 pounds is a start, but your BMI is likely still in the red zone. But it turns out that 10 percent does matter. A lot. An obese 40-year-old man would spares himself three years of hypertension and nearly two years of diabetes by losing 10 percent of his weight. A 10 percent reduction in home energy consumption could reduce carbon emissions by as much as 20 percent (generating energy during peak demand periods creates more pollution than off-peak generation). And those Your Speed signs? It turns out that reducing speeds by 10 percent from 40 to 35 mph would cut fatal injuries by about half.

虽然GlowCap装置在高达40%的患者身上体现出了改善效果，但相比传统方式，反馈循环所所起到的改善作用通常只有10个百分点。出人意料的是，这样的10个百分点近似于一个恒定指数；从家庭能源健康到戒烟计划，再到限速标识，各个应用反馈循环的领域都会出现10%的改善效果。乍看之下，10%似乎并不是太多。如果你是一个体重为110公斤的人，减掉11公斤只能算个开头，因为你的体重指数一直处于危险区域中。但如果从另一个角度看，10%是个相当了不起的数字。因为减掉10%的体重，一个肥胖的四十岁中年人患上高血压的年龄就会推迟三年，患糖尿病的年龄则会推迟两年左右。家庭能源消耗减少10%即意味着减少多达20%的碳排放（需求高峰时期的能量输出会比低需求时期的能量输出要产生更多的污染）。至于限速信号标识，若它能帮助驾驶员将64公里每小时的时速放慢至58公里每小时（即减速10%），那么出现致命车祸的几率也会随即骤减50%。

In other words, 10 percent is something of an inflection point, where lots of great things happen. The results are measurable, the economics calculable. “The value of behavior change is incredibly large: nearly $5,000 a year,” says David Rose, citing a CVS pharmacy white paper. “At that rate, we can afford to give every diabetic a connected glucometer. We can give the morbidly obese a Wi-Fi-enabled scale and a pedometer. The value is there; the savings are there. The cost of the sensors is negligible.”

换句话说，10%相当于某个拐点，越过此点就会产生质的飞跃。不但其结果是可衡量的，而且经济效益也可以计算。“行为改变所带来的价值大到令人不可思议，若以金钱衡量，相当于每年5000美元，”大卫·罗斯说，他给出的这项数据来自于CVS医药公司的一份白皮书。“照此计算，我们甚至能为每个糖尿病人省出一台联网的血糖仪，也能为那些病态肥胖者省出一台带有Wi-Fi功能的磅秤和步程计。价值摆在那儿；节约效果也是实实在在的。相比之下，感应器的花费简直可以忽略不计。”

So feedback loops work. Why? Why does putting our own data in front of us somehow compel us to act? In part, it’s that feedback taps into something core to the human experience, even to our biological origins. Like any organism, humans are self-regulating creatures, with a multitude of systems working to achieve homeostasis. Evolution itself, after all, is a feedback loop, albeit one so elongated as to be imperceptible by an individual. Feedback loops are how we learn, whether we call it trial and error or course correction. In so many areas of life, we succeed when we have some sense of where we stand and some evaluation of our progress. Indeed, we tend to crave this sort of information; it’s something we viscerally want to know, good or bad. As Stanford’s Bandura put it, “People are proactive, aspiring organisms.” Feedback taps into those aspirations.

所以说反馈循环的确有用。但原因何在？为什么把一些我们自身的行为数据放在我们面前，就能莫名其妙地强迫我们实施某些行为？从某种程度上看，反馈利用了人类体验，甚至是我们生物起源的某些核心要素。和其他所有生物体一样，人类也是一种自我调节的生物，拥有很多用于获取内稳态的系统。毕竟，进化本身就是一种反馈循环，虽然对于个体来说，这种反馈过于微弱而无法被感受到。反馈循环就是我们的学习方式，不管我们是将它称之为试错法还是过程修正法。在日常生活中的很多方面，当我们对于自己的处境有所体察，并对自己的进步进行了某些估价时，我们就算获得了成功。的确，我们常常会渴望能获得这一类的信息；我们发自内心的想知道这些东西，不管是好还是坏。正如斯坦福大学的班杜拉所总结的那样：“人是前瞻性的有抱负的生物。”反馈正是利用了这样的抱负心理。

The visceral satisfaction and even pleasure we get from feedback loops is the organizing principle behind GreenGoose, a startup being hatched by Brian Krejcarek, a Minnesota native who wears a near-constant smile, so enthusiastic is he about the power of cheap sensors. His mission is to stitch feedback loops into the fabric of our daily lives, one sensor at a time.

我们从反馈循环中所得到的本能的满意乃至愉悦，也正是GreenGoose公司的组织原则，GreenGoose是一家由布莱恩·克莱贾里克（Brian Krejcarek）创办的初创型公司。克莱贾里克是土生土长的明尼苏达人，脸上总是笑容可掬，他对廉价感应器的强大功用非常狂热。他的目标是要将反馈循环整合入我们的日常生活中，让感应器无处不在。

As Krejcarek describes it, GreenGoose started with a goal not too different from Shwetak Patel’s: to measure household consumption of energy. But the company’s mission took a turn in 2009, when he experimented with putting one of those ever-cheaper accelerometers on a bicycle wheel. As the wheel rotated, the sensor picked up the movement, and before long Krejcarek had a vision of a grander plan. “I wondered what else we could measure. Where else could we stick these things?” The answer he came up with: everywhere. The GreenGoose concept starts with a sheet of stickers, each containing an accelerometer labeled with a cartoon icon of a familiar household object—a refrigerator handle, a water bottle, a toothbrush, a yard rake. But the secret to GreenGoose isn’t the accelerometer; that’s a less-than-a-dollar commodity. The key is the algorithm that Krejcarek’s team has coded into the chip next to the accelerometer that recognizes a particular pattern of movement. For a toothbrush, it’s a rapid back-and-forth that indicates somebody is brushing their teeth. For a water bottle, it’s a simple up-and-down that correlates with somebody taking a sip. And so on. In essence, GreenGoose uses sensors to spray feedback loops like atomized perfume throughout our daily life—in our homes, our vehicles, our backyards. “Sensors are these little eyes and ears on whatever we do and how we do it,” Krejcarek says. “If a behavior has a pattern, if we can calculate a desired duration and intensity, we can create a system that rewards that behavior and encourages more of it.” Thus the first component of a feedback loop: data gathering.

正如克莱贾里克所描绘的那样，GreenGoose公司一开始的目标与施威达克·帕特尔颇为相似，都是为了测量家庭能源消耗量。但在2009年，该公司的创业计划发生了急剧的变化，当时克莱贾里克正尝试将其中一款非常廉价的速度计安装到自行车车轮上，当车轮旋转时，感应器就能对运动过程进行记录。不久之后，克莱贾里克萌生了一个更宏伟的计划。“我想搞清楚我们还能不能测量一些其他的参数，可不可以在其他的场合安装这些传感器？”思考的结果是，它们几乎适用于任何场合。GreenGoose最初的想法是利用贴纸，每张贴纸上面装有一枚速度计，同时还印有常见家用物品的卡通图标——电冰箱把手、水瓶、牙刷和扫把等等。但关键的秘诀并不在于速度计——那只是成本不到一美元的小玩意，而在于速度计边上的一小块芯片，这块芯片被编码入克莱贾里克研究小组所开发的独特算法，它能够识别出特殊的运动模式。比如，对于牙刷而言，快速的往返运动意味着有人在刷牙；而对于水瓶，简单的上下运动则表示可能有人在喝水。以此类推。从本质上看，GreenGoose利用传感器去普及反馈循环就类似于日常生活中的喷香水——香味无处不在，屋子里，汽车里，庭院里，到处都有。“传感器就像是小眼睛和小耳朵，不管我们做什么，怎么做，它们都能看得一清二楚，听得真真切切，”克莱贾里克说。“如果某种行为会形成模式，如果我们能计算出期望持续时间和强度，我们就能创造出一种奖励这种行为并鼓励其多多益善的系统。”因此，数据采集成为反馈循环的第一要素。

Then comes the second step: relevance. GreenGoose converts the data into points, with a certain amount of action translating into a certain number of points, say 30 seconds of teeth brushing for two points. And here Krejcarek gets noticeably excited. “The points can be used in games on our website,” he says. “Think FarmVille but with live data.” Krejcarek plans to open the platform to game developers, who he hopes will create games that are simple, easy, and sticky. A few hours of raking leaves might build up points that can be used in a gardening game. And the games induce people to earn more points, which means repeating good behaviors. The idea, Krejcarek says, is to “create a bridge between the real world and the virtual world. This has all got to be fun.”

紧接着就是第二个阶段：相关性。GreenGoose将数据转换成分值，一定频度的行为会被转化成相应的分数，例如30秒的刷牙时间相当于两分。说到这里，克莱贾里克显然激动起来。“分数可以用于网页游戏，”他说。“想想看，这可是带有实时数据的《模拟人生》。”克莱贾里克计划为游戏开发者打造一个类似的平台，该平台不但会使游戏开发过程变得简单易行，而且贴近生活。打扫几个小时的落叶就可以积累相应的分数，这些分数可以用于花园游戏，从而赚取更多的分数，这意味着良好行为得以不断重复。克莱贾里克表示，这样的理念等于“在现实世界和虚拟世界搭起了一座桥梁。简直太有趣了。”

As powerful as the idea appears now, just a few months ago it seemed like a fading pipe dream. Then based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Krejcarek had nearly run out of cash—not just for his company, but for himself. During the day, he was working on GreenGoose in a office building near the MIT campus—and each night, he’d sneak into the building’s air shaft, where he’d stashed an air mattress and some clothes. Then, in late February, he went to the Launch conference in San Francisco, a two-day event where select entrepreneurs get a chance to demo their company to potential funders. Krejcarek hadn’t been selected for an onstage demo, but when the conference organizers saw a crowd eyeing his product on the exhibit floor, he was given four minutes to make a presentation. It was one of those only-in-Silicon Valley moments. The crowd “just got it,” he recalls. Within days, he had nearly $600,000 in new funding. He moved to San Francisco, rented an apartment—and bought a bed. GreenGoose will release its first product, a kit of sensors that encourage pet owners to play and interact with their dogs, with sensors for dog collar, pet toys, and dog doors, sometime this fall.

虽然这样的想法在现在看起来潜力巨大，但就在几个月以前，它似乎还只是白日梦而已。当时在马萨诸塞的坎布里奇，克莱贾里克为公司和个人开销几乎花光了所有的积蓄。白天，他在麻省理工校园附近一栋办公楼里的GreenGoose总部上班，晚上他就偷偷溜进大楼的天井里过夜，他把充气床和衣物都藏在那里。到了二月底，他去旧金山参加了Launch大会，在为期两天的大会上，被选拔出来的企业家们会获得一个向潜在投资者展示自己公司的机会。虽然克莱贾里克没有获得上台展示的机会，但是当大会组织者看到一群人都在围观他在展厅地板上展出的产品时，便主动给了他四分钟的展示时间。结果出现了在硅谷都难得一见的盛况。人们“蜂拥而至，”他回忆说。短短几天时间，他就筹集到了将近60万美元的资金。之后，他将公司搬到了旧金山，还租下了一套公寓——还买了张床。GreenGoose公司的首个产品即将面世，它是一整套传感器组合，可以激励宠物主人与自己的狗狗玩耍和互动，传感器可以装在狗脖套、宠物玩具和狗舍的门上。该产品将于今秋上市销售。

Part of the excitement around GreenGoose is that the company is so good at “gamification,” the much-blogged-about notion that game elements like points or levels can be applied to various aspects of our lives. Gamification is exciting because it promises to make the hard stuff in life fun—just sprinkle a little videogame magic and suddenly a burden turns into bliss. But as happens with fads, gamification is both overhyped and misunderstood. It is too often just a shorthand for badges or points, like so many gold stars on a spelling test. But just as no number of gold stars can trick children into thinking that yesterday’s quiz was fun, game mechanics, to work, must be an informing principle, not a veneer.

GreenGoose所开发的产品之所以令人如此激动，其部分原因在于他们非常善于将产品“游戏化（gamification）”，这是一种经常出现于网络的概念，它是指将分数或等级这些游戏元素应用到日常生活中的方方面面。游戏化概念非常激动人心，因为它可以让枯燥无味的生活行为变得生动有趣起来——例如，融入一些小小的视频游戏就能让令人难以忍受的负担顷刻之间成为享受。但随着游戏化的风行，它也出现了过于夸大和被误解的倾向。例如，获取徽章或分数过于轻松，就如同拼写测验中轻易就能拿到高分。但正如再高的分数也不能促使孩子们觉得拼写测验有趣一样，真正起到改善效果的游戏机制必须是富于启迪性的，而非只是好玩的表象。

With its savvy application of feedback loops, though, GreenGoose is onto more than just the latest fad. The company represents the fruition of a long-promised technological event horizon: the Internet of Things, in which a sensor-rich world measures our every action. This vision, championed by Kevin Ashton at Belkin, Sandy Pentland at MIT, and Bruce Sterling in the pages of this magazine, has long had the whiff of vaporware, something promised by futurists but never realized. But as GreenGoose, Belkin, and other companies begin to use sensors to deploy feedback loops throughout our lives, we can finally see the potential of a sensor-rich environment. The Internet of Things isn’t about the things; it’s about us.

通过对反馈循环的深入研究，GreenGoose在紧跟最新时尚的基础上更进了一步。他们甚至让物联网（Internet of Things）这种人们期盼已久的技术愿景成为了现实，在到处都是传感器的物联网世界中，我们的一举一动都会被当成数据来测量。虽然贝尔金公司的凯文·艾什顿、麻省理工研究员桑迪·佩特兰德（Sandy Pentland）以及本期杂志所介绍的科幻作家布鲁斯·斯特林（Bruce Sterling）都看好物联网，但长久以来它还只是镜中月水中花，是未来学家信誓旦旦却无法实现的虚幻之物。但现在，随着GreenGoose、贝尔金和其他公司开始利用传感器将反馈循环应用到生活中的方方面面，我们终将能够看到传感器富集环境的潜力所在。物联网不仅仅只和物体有关；它将会与我们的生活发生密切互动。

For now, the reality still isn’t as sexy as the visions. Stickers on toothbrushes and plugs in wall sockets aren’t exactly disappearing technology. But maybe requiring people to do a little work—to stick accelerometers around their house or plug a device into a wall socket—is just enough of a nudge to get our brains engaged in the prospect for change. Perhaps it’s good to have the infrastructure of feedback loops just a bit visible now, before they disappear into our environments altogether, so that they can serve as a subtle reminder that we have something to change, that we can do better—and that the tools for doing better are rapidly, finally, turning up all around us.

就目前而言，现实还是无法与美好的愿景相提并论。牙刷上的贴纸和壁式插座上的外设并不是完全隐形的技术。但也许正是稍许的人为能动性——在屋子四周贴上速度计或将设备插入壁式插座——就足以促使我们的大脑去考虑改变所能带来的美妙前景。也许，在彻底融入环境中以前，这些反馈循环式的基础设施无法做到完全隐形并不是什么坏事，因为这样它们就能担负起微妙警示的作用，即提醒我们，还有地方需要改进，还能做得更好——以及启发我们做得更好的工具最终将会很快变得无处不在。

Thomas Goetz (thomas@wired.com) is the executive editor of Wired. His latest book, The Decision Tree, is now out in paperback.

托马斯·格茨（Thomas Goetz：thomas@wired.com）是《连线》的执行编辑，他的最新著作《决策树》（The Decision Tree）已经出了平装本。

【本文翻译仅为外语学习及阅读目的，原文作者个人观点与译者及译言网无关】