Bob Metcalfe: An Excerpt from Our Exclusive Interview
As the inventor of Ethernet and a pioneer of the Internet, you played a key role in a massive technological and societal change—what are some of the lessons you learned that you’d like to apply to the next big wave of change in energy?
This concept is applied history, and I believe that there are important lessons to learn from the Internet that we can use to solve energy. These lessons are many and they’re all over the map, but let me start with the fun one. I’ve decided that a good thing to do is to change the color (green) of the energy movement. Green is not a good color. We should use blue instead, because although green stands for environmentalism, it carries all sorts of baggage. To my ears, it sounds like anti-technology, anti-American, anti-capitalist and anti-nuke. I bring up this point because energy has become a movement much like the Internet was a movement. And with movements come true believers, dogmas, inquisitions, colors and slogans. So, if you’re going to have a movement, you have to take some care in your choices. Instead of going green, let’s go blue.
What other parallels do you draw between the development of the Internet and the emerging changes in energy?
Infrastructure. I really like this particular insight. In building the Internet, we used, grew and enhanced what I would call an innovation infrastructure: the notion of venture capital and all the infrastructure that goes with it. This is the model where you combine university professors and their graduating students with experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to create seriously competing companies that bring new technologies to market. Imagine if that same type of infrastructure that came together to solve all of the information problems facing the burgeoning Internet came together to do the same thing in energy. This infrastructure is what leads to massive change, and I think you’re seeing that infrastructure being put in place today.
Recently, there’s been a resurgence of in- terest in nuclear power. What are your thoughts around startups pursuing this space?
I’m interested in nuclear startups for a simple reason—energy density. The energy density of gasoline is about 1,000 times that of a lithium-ion battery, and nuclear bonds are another factor of a million better than gasoline. The state of the nuclear industry today...
To read the full interview, as well as insights and opinions from Nanosys CEO Jason Hartlove and the Kauffman Foundation's Paul Kedrosky, get the premium report
This concept is applied history, and I believe that there are important lessons to learn from the Internet that we can use to solve energy. These lessons are many and they’re all over the map, but let me start with the fun one. I’ve decided that a good thing to do is to change the color (green) of the energy movement. Green is not a good color. We should use blue instead, because although green stands for environmentalism, it carries all sorts of baggage. To my ears, it sounds like anti-technology, anti-American, anti-capitalist and anti-nuke. I bring up this point because energy has become a movement much like the Internet was a movement. And with movements come true believers, dogmas, inquisitions, colors and slogans. So, if you’re going to have a movement, you have to take some care in your choices. Instead of going green, let’s go blue.
What other parallels do you draw between the development of the Internet and the emerging changes in energy?
Infrastructure. I really like this particular insight. In building the Internet, we used, grew and enhanced what I would call an innovation infrastructure: the notion of venture capital and all the infrastructure that goes with it. This is the model where you combine university professors and their graduating students with experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to create seriously competing companies that bring new technologies to market. Imagine if that same type of infrastructure that came together to solve all of the information problems facing the burgeoning Internet came together to do the same thing in energy. This infrastructure is what leads to massive change, and I think you’re seeing that infrastructure being put in place today.
Recently, there’s been a resurgence of in- terest in nuclear power. What are your thoughts around startups pursuing this space?
I’m interested in nuclear startups for a simple reason—energy density. The energy density of gasoline is about 1,000 times that of a lithium-ion battery, and nuclear bonds are another factor of a million better than gasoline. The state of the nuclear industry today...
To read the full interview, as well as insights and opinions from Nanosys CEO Jason Hartlove and the Kauffman Foundation's Paul Kedrosky, get the premium report
Labels: alternative energy, alternative power, Bob Metcalfe, energy, ethernet, internet, interview, nuclear, power
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