Syracuse, N.Y.-based company CollabWorx Inc. and collaborators from the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems (Syracuse CoE) and Syracuse University have developed a working prototype of an indoor climate control system that has the ability to make "smart" decisions in response to changing conditions within an office or building based on interaction with the human occupants.

What took me a whole series of posts to explain, Cory Doctorow has summed up succinctly in a column for Information Week: the "information economy" is not about selling information -- it's about using information to make everything else more valuable. The problem is that many in the US believe that the information economy is about selling information, and that mistake explains many of the strategic mistakes made over the past few decades that we've been describing here. Unfortunately, as we've been noting, the US has bet so strongly on the idea of the information economy being about selling information that it's pushing other countries to put laws in place that support the US's position on this -- and doing so under the false banner of "free trade." The purpose of real free trade is that it's beneficial to both parties through the efficiencies afforded by comparative advantage. In this case, however, these new protectionist policies are only beneficial to the US -- and, as Cory notes, this means they'll eventually be ignored. The benefit is too strong not to ignore them. And, once that happens, then it's those other countries that gain the benefits of recognizing that information makes everything else more valuable, while the US suffers under the modern equivalent of information mercantilism. It's not good for the US economy. It's not good for US businesses -- and yet due to this one incorrect belief, it's what we're left with.