Bob Metcalfe is the inventor of Ethernet. He has watched the evolution of the Internet from its humble beginnings to the ubiquitous thing that it is now. What does he see as the next big thing the Internet will revolutionize? Energy!
Future Internet enabled smart grid(s) will be able to route energy from where it is being generated to where it is needed in milliseconds.
One of the interesting points of his talk, was that we should not have to conserve. What?!? All the green mantras are about sustainability and conservation. Yes, conservation is important today because most of the energy sources are brown sources. However, if we can get to a point where clean renewable power is cheap and abundant, there may be no need to conserve.
Hmmm... I would argue that I would rather see natural spaces rather than power plants, even if they were renewable power plants, but it is still thought provoking.
Mr. Metcalfe has a history of making predictions of major Internet outages that have not come to fruition. So as with all predictions, take them with a grain of salt. We have no way of knowing how the smallest things can grown exponentially and change the world.
The slides can be found here:
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