t century, hundreds of millions - and eventually billions - of human beings will transform their buildings into power plants to harvest renewable energies on site, store those energies in the form of hydrogen and share electricity, peer-to-peer, across local, regional, national and continental inter-grids that act much like the Internet.
Interpretation
This quote envisions a future where buildings generate and share renewable energy, transforming energy consumption and distribution.
Jeremy Rifkin's quote emphasizes a transformative vision for the future where buildings no longer just consume energy but actively participate in energy production and distribution. By evolving into power plants that harness renewable energies and facilitate peer-to-peer electricity sharing, communities can achieve a decentralized energy economy that mirrors the connectivity of the Internet, fostering sustainability and collaboration at various levels.
In practice
In a conference about sustainable urban design, this quote could highlight innovative energy solutions.
It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the over-population of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat.
The very notion that millions of workers displaced by the re-engineering and automation of the agricultural, manufacturing, and service sectors can be retrained to be scientists, engineers, technicians, executives, consultants, teachers, lawyers and the like, and then somehow find the appropriate number of job openings in the very narrow high-tech sector, seems at best a pipe dream, and at worst a delusion.
Basic income is not a utopia, it's a practical business plan for the next step of the human journey.
Generations of human beings were transformed into machines in the relentless pursuit of material wealth: We lived to work.
When we seed millions of acres of land with these plants, what happens to foraging birds, to insects, to microbes, to the other animals, when they come in contact and digest plants that are producing materials ranging from plastics to vaccines to pharmaceutical products?
What makes the IoT a disruptive technology in the way we organize economic life is that it helps humanity reintegrate itself into the complex choreography of the biosphere, and by doing so, dramatically increases productivity without compromising the ecological relationships that govern the planet.
SPAM is taking e-mail, which is a wonderful tool, and exploiting the idea that it's very inexpensive to send mail.
There is people who make stuff with words. There is people who make stuff with programs. And I really believe that that whole creative culture, people didn't realize how creative programming is. And anybody who's done it of course knows that not only is it creative, but it's incredibly absorbing.
A low-carbon, clean energy economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come.
The country that owns green, that dominates that industry, is going to have the most energy security, national security, economic security, competitive companies, healthy population and, most of all, global respect.
The thing about the Internet is that you can write something... for a very narrow audience and make a living at it.
I think Amazon is the greatest start-up and the greatest company in the world. The way they are using new technologies is not just disrupting retail, it's getting ready to disrupt everything.
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