Edged in Blue

I like Bob Metcalf for a lot of reasons.  For starters, he invented ethernet, which is a big chunk of what I do for a living.  Ethernet is also part of the underpinnings of the Internet, which lets me do a lot of things I couldn’t do before 1993.

Bob’s got a brilliant idea.  We need to overhaul our energy infrastructure.  There are a lot of reasons from climate change (if you don’t believe it by now, you’re an idiot) to national security (We start by telling Hugo Chavez to go screw himself and cap it off by laughing maniacally at Saudi Arabia and Iran when we don’t need their steenkeeng oil anymore) to obsolescence (Gasoline and diesel were the original green energy systems – in 1890).  But instead of building more big power stations and waiting for Washington to run up the deficit anymore, Bob says model new energy after…

Wait for it…

Teh intrawebs.

Yep.  Bob says we should be using the Internet as a model for overhauling our energy supplies.  Gotta say I love the idea.  Bob says…

“The world should be happy that a bunch of Internet people like me have turned their attention to energy because that’s how we are going to solve it.  It is easier to teach energy to people who are steeped in the entrepreneurial culture than it is to teach entrepreneurial culture to people who know energy. People who have worked for BP for 25 years have no entrepreneurial bones.”

True that.  And BP has a big jones for some sweet solar research cash, so you know we’re in trouble if they can’t pull it together.

That said, here’s what Bob proposes:

• Rather than building large, centralized power plants we should build lots of smaller, distributed sources of electricity. “This may be the Internet’s killer lesson for energy: Go distributed!” Metcalfe says. Just as laptops replaced big mainframe computers, solar power on roofs or even small-scale nuclear plants can replace big, polluting coal plants.
• Make the electricity grid a smart, two-way system, like the Internet, so that energy can move around freely. Everyone can be a buyer and seller of energy, just as everyone on the Internet can be a publisher or broadcaster or a consumer of media.
• Bubbles are good. Speculative bubbles accelerate innovation. They did so around infotech and will do so with clean energy.
• Don’t look to Washington for solutions. “Technological innovation is a war with status quo,” says Metcalfe. “And the status quo is big and mean and resourceful and they own Washington.”
• But Washington can help by breaking up monopolies (AT&T and IBM before the Internet), reducing capital gains taxes to spur investment and sponsoring basic research.

Now granted, some things Bob does that I don’t want to do.

“I traded in my 12-cylinder Mercedes for a three-cylinder Mercedes,” he says, showing a photo of the pint-sized vehicle. “What I most like about this car is that I now own a six-car garage.”

Um…  Yeah.  Thanks, Bob, but I get claustrophobic just looking at those Smart cars.  How about I just pick up a used Chevy Volt when the Neon goes to the boneyard?

Then again, that’s a matter of taste.  While I wouldn’t want to go car shopping with Bob Metcalf (I have no use for a 12-cylinder gas black hole or a crash-killing Smart Car), I do like that he’s applying a little bit of that “new economy” thinking from the nineties (No, not the disappearing venture capital kind that triggered the last recession) to a major problem.

Maybe Apple can save Chrysler with that kind of thinking.  So where do I plug in my iJeep?