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In the 1980s, the Round2 was displaced by cheaper molded plastic boxes, and its electrical wiring was replaced with computer circuitry, making thermostats cheaper to produce and their electronic insides more durable. A few thermostats introduced the option to connect an air conditioner as well, giving the user a switch that shifted from a HEAT mode for winter to a COOL mode for summer. A precious few enabled you to set hot and cold limits in a single control. But despite these improvements, for our purposes, each of these changes was incremental. It wasn’t until well after the Age of Computers that thermostats made another major leap in evolution.
But before we get there, let me make a last appreciative shout-out to Cornelis, who, by the way, also invented revolutionary new dyeing techniques, the first submarine, a solar-powered harpsichord, and magic lantern devices. He furthered the field of optics and wrote a treatise on alchemy that would remain popular and in print for 100 years. Sadly owing to the capricious attentions of the royal court, the unlucky fellow died poor. His peers Kepler and Galileo are revered as historical geniuses, but Drebbel is a footnote with the occasional historian’s nod. We did name a crater on the moon for you, Cornelis. It’s the least we could do for centuries of your legacy.
Then the Nest Learning Thermostat
That aforementioned leap of thermostat evolution is, of course, the Nest Learning Thermostat. Let’s look at how the Nest Thermostat is different than what came before it.
Even with feedback control mechanisms on older thermostats allowing people to set the temperature thresholds that suited them best, those “dumb” thermostats still had to have their thresholds adjusted to account for personal tastes, time of day, humidity, and the seasons. In contrast, the Nest Thermostat connects to the home network to know the home’s location and the calendar date. It knows the humidity and current weather. It knows how long it takes to change your home’s temperature. It has smart defaults such that most people can just hook it up and let it run. But when homeowners find themselves uncomfortable at any time and adjust the temperature, the Nest Learning Thermostat pays attention to the change. It regards it as input. It learns. OK, its algorithm thinks, this family likes it a little cooler in spring. Got it. I’ll remember that for next spring. (And its memory is perfect.)
Power users of the device can set up schedules that save on energy usage, either while they are routinely away at work and school, or for ad-hoc times like vacations and business trips. It talks to and coordinates with their carbon monoxide alarm and outdoor cameras. Rich feedback mechanisms, piped to smartphones and websites, help users visualize energy consumption and engage both ecological and competitive sensibilities to encourage saving money and energy.
The Nest Thermostat is still evolving as a product and refining its ability to deliver on its promise, but let’s take a moment to consider how far the concept of the thermostat has come.
Recap: From Tool to Agent
The palm frond and fan are tools that let you cool yourself. Drebbel’s incubator was a system that let you set a threshold to run against until further notice. The Nest Thermostat acts as a personal temperature regulator. It is as if you had hired a wise and happy butler to stand there at the thermostat, using everything that he knows about the clock, public and personal calendars, as well as the general preferences and statuses of the people in the house, to help them effortlessly achieve that persistent challenge that was bestowed upon them by Tetraceratops insignis eons ago—to keep themselves at a comfortable temperature. Even if its best guess is wrong, it’s happy to adjust to your request—and moreover to remember. That is a thermostat that has evolved.
This remarkable evolution is happening not just to thermostats, but to almost every device and service that you use. As you’ll see in the next chapter, tools are becoming agentive.
CHAPTER 2
Fait Accompli: Agentive Tech Is Here
Putting Physical and Information Work Together to Become Agentive
Getting to a Working Definition of “Agentive”
Drawing a Boundary Around Agentive Technology
Recap: Agents Are Persistent, Background Assistants
In the prior chapter, we followed temperature control technology from its evolutionary origins through several stages—from the moment our distant forebears developed the need to control their temperature by behavior to using handheld fans and windows, and from the invention of the automated thermostat to the Nest Thermostat.
Tracing this journey is important because it is not unique to thermostats. These increasingly sophisticated technological solutions to the broad general problem of human temperature management illustrate two points. The first is that the evolution of tools can be viewed as iterated solutions to some core human need. The second is that agents are a natural solution to a great many computable human problems, as designers attempt to reduce effort and maximize results.
In this chapter, I’ll define what an agent is and is not, use the thermostat as an example of one, look at some other technologies through a similar lens, and then make the case that far from being a sci-fi future, agents are beginning to appear in the world around us. They’re not yet ubiquitous, but it’s easy to see how they will be.
To start, let’s go back and look at the temperature management tools. But this time, let’s ask what work they are doing on behalf of the user.
Reducing Physical Work
The first and most obvious work that tools can do is to simplify and abstract the physical work involved in a task.
Early tools, like the handheld fan, are tools that simply shape the physical forces that the user is applying to them. The fan spreads out force over a plane, moving air more effectively than we could with our hand alone. These kinds of tools help save us work by letting us use materials and forms better suited to the task than our body parts. A fan is much better at moving air than our outspread hand is. Most technologies start their lives as these manual tools.
Tools can begin to take on the physical effort
