Suddenly the world is racing to find ways to create cheap, clean energy. A study of the Internet’s long development since 1946, arguably when modern computing began, offers valuable lessons that can help keep energy innovations on course for a comparable 62 years:
Hardening of the Categories. In the early days of the Internet there were computers, monopolized by IBM, and there was communications, monopolized by AT&T. The U.S. Department of Justice regulated IBM, and the Federal Communications Commission regulated AT&T. Officials in Washington, D.C., actually had years of hearings to decide which agency was in charge of which: computers versus communications. That turned out to be a silly hardening of the categories; the Internet soon became a merger of computing and communications, not one or the other.
Voice, video and data were once separate categories of communications, too, narrowly construed by their respective monopolies to be telephone, television and the Internet. Over the decades voice became more than telephone, video more than television, and both are now integrated into the Internet. For a long time the goal was to integrate voice, video and data by carrying them on the same copper wires. The old telephone and television monopolies were surprised when voice and video became data on the Internet. So don’t be surprised as we learn not to harden the categories, for example, among feed, food and fuel; corn ethanol is teaching us that right now.
Choosing Laws. Few people remember that during the early years of the Internet, computing resources were centralized. Grosch’s Law said that bigger computers were better, so IBM introduced its big IBM 360 mainframes in 1964. But starting the very next year, Moore’s Law came out of Silicon Valley saying many little computers were better than a few big ones. Then, if I may say so myself, Metcalfe’s Law came along to say that the more you networked computers the better. The Internet’s laws changed. Our way of looking at computing and communications changed. We learned too slowly that cheap and clean communications would be distributed. Personal computers and mobile phones surprised us. What do we think energy’s “laws” will be? Will cheap and clean energy come from centralized power stations? Internet history makes me think not.
We also believed, in the early days of the “information explosion,” that we needed to conserve bandwidth. The huge multibillion-dollar infrastructure of copper wires around the world was limited by some version of Shannon’s Law to carrying not much bandwidth. So our first priorities were on bandwidth conservation, on data compression, multiplexing, buffering and smart terminals—the low-hanging fruit. But after 62 years of building the Internet, do we use less bandwidth now? Was building the Internet mostly about conservation? No. Today we are not using less bandwidth, not twice as much, not 10 times as much, but something like a billion times more.
In 62 years from now, in 2070, are we going to use less energy than we do now? No. Today I do walk more, bike more and take trains more, and I’ve recently switched cars, dropping from 12 to four cylinders. I’ve already ordered my next car, which will move me from 30- to 40-plus miles per gallon. I plan to go all electric after that. And I turn my energy-efficient lights out more religiously. But I don’t think for a moment that we’re going to conserve our way out of the energy crisis. Internet history shows that prosperity depends on abundant bandwidth. Prosperity (gross domestic product, per capita) is proportional to energy use. We are not going to lower per capita consumption of energy in the U.S. We are going to enable the rest of the world to be as prosperous by using not less but more energy. We need to make energy cheap, clean and therefore abundant—really abundant, for a really long time.
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Add CommentIt is important to remember that when the dust settles "they" will always win but that is not always a bad thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy "they" I mean the large coorporations and goverment insitutions.
Using AT&T as an example. The long distance arm was spun off in 1984 and forced to compete under regulation. By the time of the internet it was a large innovator and enabler. It was not totally the bust in the internet that killed it. It was a combination of:
1) Internet bust
2) Competiting with imaginary companies such as Worldcomm (before your book cooking competitors get caught it's hard to gain investment capital)
3) Lack of law enforcement - Don't forget that the year 2000 FCC CHOOSE not to enforce the telecommunitation act of 1996.
So AT&T was purchased by a monopoly.
But at the end of the day at least the internet is still here even though innovation and cost reduction has all but stopped. Has your telephone, cabel, and/or mobile bill gone up or down over the last 8 years?
Back to the articles point. The pre-computing era was dominated by paper. The computing era produced even more paper. The internet has at last reduced paper while increasing information. In the same way hopefully we can go from the past "1.0" carbon ... followed by the present "2.0" hypercarbon ... to the "3.0" carbon reduced with more energy.
The new development of Gravity Power Towers occur every 2 to 4 miles along transportation pathways networking with each other through digital communication and acting intelligently drawing the eternal limitless energy from gravity force acting on vertically mobile heavy masses, and delivering to or recovering power from, multiple rolling units in horizontal direction, along the rail or road or runway, actually is a net work of distributed intelligent energy providers with no limits!(http://gravitypoweredtranspsort.blogspot.com and also click on Newton's image at www.atrilab.com ) The gravity Power is real and limitless, can add energy equivalent of entire Saudi Oil fields to USA with hardly one time investment of $150 b. Gravity Power Towers can leverage one unit of energy from existing sources, to produce three times more work, in transportation. USA now has the invention with them since last 2 months. Yes the evolution is following the internet model- actually humans survive because they also intrinsically survive by networking! Central command control model invariably crumbles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Will cheap and clean energy come from centralized power stations? Internet history makes me think not."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost untapped "natural" energy is diffuse. We've already exploited concentrated energy: dams, coal, oil, uranium,. These natural resources require "big industry" to effectively exploit. Diffuse resources: wood, solar, wind, and even biomass is best used locally. In fact, local users tapped these resources quite successfully in pre-industrial days: windmills for water pumping, milling, and small local industry, low head water, wood for heating and local industry, biomass for shelter and heating. To successfully use these diffuse resources in our post-industrial world infrastructure is required. Concentrated energy sources paid for the construction of rail, highway, and electrical lines. The later distributed concentrated energy to a diffuse consumer base. It is, thus, most immediately available for reverse flow from a diffuse source to a concentrated consumer.
Solar and wind electrical generation can be harvested in a diffuse manner and sent over existing electrical power systems to a central source for redistribution to diffuse consumers and to concentrated energy consumers. It is in place today.
Eventually, other diffuse sources could harvest energy and send it via reverse flow through gas and water lines. Decisions about the most effective harvesting of biomass can be made based on the cost of shipping the biomass vs shipping the energy produced by small dispersed generation plants.
I suspect that the most ecological friendly approach is to consume biomass near it's source and send surplus energy to to a concentration center. waste products from the energy generation process is most likely reusable near the production site (post production ethanol waste as cattle feed stock and as fertilizer).
A solution to our "energy problem" is available. All that is required is the political will.
What we need is more people using renewable energy in their own home applications. For instance, if everyone had their own solar and wind generators, then our reliance on coal and nuclear power would be significantly reduced. The cool thing that would happen there would be that the mass production of such technology would drive their costs down. Also, the reduced demand on "big energy" will cause them to find cheaper ways to produce energy so that they can compete with the "personal energy" sector. The trick then would be to have enough regulations and government subsidies in place that would encourage them to lean towards "greener" energy sources and discourage them from polluting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen as far as "big oil" goes, we just need to attempt to switch to either electric, hybrid, bio-diesel, or vegetable oil powered personal vehicles. The industrial sector needs the power that current methods produce, so they can lag behind. In the mean time, if more people want more efficient cars and more "green" cars, then "big auto" will start developing them. Right now, we're still to infatuated with gas guzzling behemoths and hot rods.
Noticing a pattern here? It's all about a change in what the individual is doing, not with big business or Washington is doing. Big business will do with is profitable, if using polluting and inefficient sources of energy aren't profitable, they will stay away from them. If they see that there is a demand for renewable, sustainable, and green energy, they will attempt to profit from it.
The biggest problem is that this technology is expensive to make at the moment, and it isn't disposable. Big business makes their money from selling things that we use and then throw away... that way we have to keep buying more. If the solar power industry where to put solar cells on every roof on the planet, they probably won't have to make many more over the next 20 years... because they'll last that long. If they where cheap and didn't last but 5-10 years, then they might consider it a bit more.
Innovators who hate Washington money never seem to remember that the Internet and nuclear power and scientific agriculture and orbital satellites and modern highways were originally developed with Washington money. There are no hard and fast rules about what organization and funding for R&D works best. The feds could never do Silicon valley, but Silicon Valley could never do the Manhattan Project.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid Burress
Ad Astra Institute
Lawrence, Kansas