PowerShake is a wireless charging system thought of by Paul Worgan of the University of Bristol, in England, with his colleagues. Of course, there have been wireless charging systems before. So what’s different about this one? The answer is that PowerShake is focusing on trying to make phones and other portable electronic devices, such as smartwatches, be able to share their charge. You would be able to share charge by holding a device with a low battery against another device, which would then initiate the power transfer. I thought that that seems like it would make it easy to just steal someone else’s charge, but perhaps they’ll make it so that there’s something else you have to do first.
In testing this idea, however, they found that some people said they wouldn’t want to share their precious battery charge. In response to this, they decided that a form of inducement might help. Vassilis Kostakos, a computer scientist at Oulu University in Finland, said that one possibility is cash. He and his colleagues set up an auction for battery charge, with 22 volunteers. The results showed that most of the people wanted $2.00 for 10% of their power when it was fully charged, and $5.00 for 10% when their charge had depleted to 20%. On average, people wanted $3.00 for 10% of their power.
A principle I think is involved here is the golden rule. If you needed to make an important phone call, but didn’t have the charge to do it with, you’d probably appreciate it if someone was willing to give you some power. Of course, many people probably would want to help, though maybe not if you just wanted to watch some cat video. The ideal situation, I think, would be that everyone would have solar charging capabilities on their devices as well as be able to charge them normally, and possibly be able to share their charge. They would share generously when possible, in device power the same as in everything else.
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