Vaporware: Man Made

What would happen if we could directly harness the power generated by human motion? Imagine a tiny generator connected to all of the machines in every gym and health club in the country. While each individual is only creating a tiny amount of electricity, collectively it could power great things. Electronics are getting smaller and less power hungry. Methods to generate renewable energy are getting more available and less expensive. Combined together it is not that hard to imagine a company running completely from the power it can directly generate. This could also be a huge marketing tool.

Imagine a factory located in an inner city with a very large health club attached. The club is free to join and offers rewards to those that exercise on their equipment. Everyone from homeless people, the poor and the hungry to office workers are invited to come and push, pull, peddle, lift or rotate to their heart's content. The people get a direct benefit of added strength and weight loss while getting credit for every unit of energy they create. Those credits can be redeemed for a wide range of things from things designed to directly help the poor (food and clothing) to things that help those just looking to burn calories (with a variety of entertainment options). Credits can be freely gifted to others or to a charity to redeem as needed.

Taken to the extreme, all of the office workers in the company have tiny generators connected to their chairs and every computer workstation has a treadmill that requires regular movement to keep the display active. This benefits resource management in two ways; computer displays are only active when a person is there to see it, there is no such thing as a sedentary worker so health care costs go down.