Is a New “Green” Computer Company Poisoning the Well?
The UK-based technology website The Register features the tagline, “Biting the hand the feeds IT,” to showcase its skeptical coverage of the claims that pour out of the computer industry. This week, it presented a case study of a company that is promising a revolutionary green PC (depicted here), while trying to grease the hands that (could) feed it.
Promising a groundbreaking product while showing little evidence of the ability to deliver on that promise is hardly new in the world of information technology. Such products regularly turn out to be vaporware, which is so familiar in this field that lists of vaporware products are a perennial feature in some technology publications. (ComputerWorld’s The Top 15 Vaporware Products of All-Time is one recent example.)
In the case of computer start-up CherryPal, it is not only surprising claims that draw skepticism. It is also a promotional strategy that threatens the trust on which communities depend.
The Register offers this introduction to what CherryPal is promising:
“Here’s how you to get to CherryPal. Gather up all of the hot technology buzzwords – cloud computing, going green, communities – and mush them together into something about the size of sandwich.”
Mushy sandwiches aside, CherryPal claims that it is able to get unexpectedly strong performance out of a tiny desktop computer with a very low power microprocessor. The company states that it aimed to produce the greenest, most affordable PC, and asserts that it will run applications faster than Windows PCs or Macs, while only using 2 watts of power. By contrast, this site reports that laptop computers typically use 15 to 45 watts of power and desktops 60 to 250 watts. Even computers in sleep mode reportedly use 1 to 6 watts, so for a desktop computer to use just 2 watts while up and running would be a great advance. Moving to a world in which computers use just a small percentage of the power they consume today would be a noteworthy step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But such a claim would require independent verification. CherryPal, however, didn’t provide a machine for The Register or anyone else to test. Instead, it has embarked on what The Register suggests is a cynical strategy to seed online communities with favorable reviews.
The Register reports:
“We’ve spotted numerous ads on Craigslist where CherryPal is offering up stock options to bloggers, writers and students who will extol the virtues of its product.”
In the ads, CherryPal insists that it is building a brand based on its core values, which include not only being green, but also being open. Open, the company contends, means using open source software as well as an open communication strategy, by which it seems to mean spreading positive messages on blogs and social networking sites. The Register then cuts to the chase:
“Er, open apparently also means fake. And core values mean bribing people to like your gear.
…
What happened to the good old days when you bribed people behind closed doors? That’s how you make it seem like there’s a real community championing a product. Tsk, tsk. “
I am more concerned about the effect of such tactics on the communities in which we participate than I am about whatever happens to CherryPal. As we engage with others on blogs or other social media, it is the trust that we place in others that allows community to develop. That doesn’t mean that we are oblivious to the possibility that our trust could be violated. Still, if we enjoy hiking, for instance, and find that the blog posts of a fellow hiker proved to be reliable recommendations of trails and gear, then we are likely to give credence to his or her future recommendations. When a company promises stock options and other bonuses to bloggers who promote its products as green, it is effectively poisoning the well of our community, forcing us to look at each other with more suspicion.
Evan
