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The New World Wide Web
Arthur Stamoulis
Despite
recent attempts by the corporate media giants to turn the web into
one giant pay-per-view, cable-television-inspired shopping mall, the
Internet is still one of the most exciting technological developments
of the past several decades. The genius of the World Wide Web, at
least in its idealized form, is found in two main characteristics:
its radical decentralization and its participatory culture.
The fact that the Internet is structured through a mish-matched network
of hubs and nodes -- exactly where the "web" concept comes into play
— has prevented it, thus far, from being controlled by any one
government or business institution. The initial growth of the web,
prior to the e-commerce boom, came about only because of this. Thousands
of scientists, researchers and students used the web to post their
own "content," participating directly in its creation, promotion,
development and expansion without waiting for the AOL Time Warners
of the world to decide what was "post-worthy" for them. It was not
too long ago that the World Wide Web was referred to as "the information
superhighway." Commentators hailed its awesome democratic potential,
and rightly so.
In his book The Hydrogen Economy and in a recent Nation
magazine article, Jeremy Rifkin takes this vision of a decentralized,
participatory web and applies it to the energy grid. The concept,
if perhaps too wonderful, is inspiring nonetheless.
Already, there are do-it-yourselfers out there who generate their
own electricity via clean and green technologies like wind, hydro,
thermal and solar. Many put their excess power back up on the local
power utility's grid -- sometimes illegally — rather than let
it go to waste, an example of what some have called "power from the
people."
Rifkin points out that new developments in fuel cells, particularly in zero-emissions, hydrogen-based fuel cells, basically enables this electric energy to be stored. In addition to folks who generate their own energy with a rooftop solar panel or a backyard windmill, he points out that automobiles with hydrogen cells (or any fuel cells really) could become "power stations on wheel." Rifkin goes on to say that, "Since the average car is parked most of the time, it can be plugged in during nonuse hours, to the home, office or the [electric grid]… If just 25 percent of all US cars supplied energy to the grid, all the power plants in the country could be eliminated."
Rifkin argues that, "the centralized, top-down flow of energy, controlled by global oil companies and utilities, would become obsolete." What he proposes is a system where people hook up the fuel cells from their cars, the PV systems on their roofs, biomass systems and so on, to a local, regional and national energy webs "using the same design principles and smart technologies that made the World Wide Web possible."
The amazing advantages of this new World Wide Web to ordinary people
are many. To start, it makes the widespread adoption of clean energy
a much quicker process. We don't need to wait for corporations to
build giant solar arrays in the desert or tidal power stations in
the Gulf. When ordinary people choose to buy a fuel cell car, they
become a green power utility. With more-and-more people getting in
on the action, the price of these automobiles — and of the many
mini-renewable energy systems that are already available — would
also come down. Coal, nuclear, oil and even natural gas could eventually
become obsolete.
One top of this, people in remote areas of the world would not have to wait for expensive power lines to be extended to their village, island or ghetto. They could simply start up a local network, much like many schools and offices do with their computers. A few PV systems, windmills or mini-hydroelectric dams coupled with a fuel cell could go far towards supplying a neighborhood's energy needs in country's where citizens consume only one-fifteenth the amount of electricity that Americans do.
The potential exists for a system like this to completely alter our economy, our foreign policy, our culture and our environment. Cheap, pollution-free energy that is generated and controlled by ordinary people rather than corporations or governments would likely have impacts we simply cannot predict.
Rifkin claims that most of the technology required to build a system
like this already exists, but acknowledges that the current energy
grid would have to be redesigned — a massive project, but not
unparalleled. The main challenge he sees is preventing dominant oil
and utility companies, with all their friends in government, from
controlling access to the "energy web" and using it simply for their
own profit. Rifkin recommends "local governments, cooperatives, community
development corporations, credit unions and the like" getting involved
and getting organized from the get-go, something he views as a necessity
for bargaining on equal footing with the fuel cell suppliers, power
line owners, and the ISP-like managers of such a system.
"By creating an energy regime that is decentralized and potentially
universally accessible to everyone," Rifkin writes, "we establish
the technological framework for creating a more participatory and
sustainable economic life — one that is compatible with the
principle of democratic participation… Making the commercial and political
arenas seamless, however, will require a human struggle of truly epic
proportions in the coming decades."
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