Author: Jock Gill

As we consider our choices for a better tomorrow, at least a livable tomorrow, it is clear that one requirement is that we take a fresh look at how we use our resources. Are we making the best possible use of them such that they can best serve the greatest number of people while doing the least damage to our challenged natural environment? Clearly, our resources are not infinite and the choices we make in how we use them have serious consequences, unintended and otherwise.

We have to discover which of our current choices for managing resources such as electricity, spectrum for communications, water for life, politics, our economy, and so forth, can be managed in new ways that will greatly increase the efficiency with which we use them while increasing the benefits they provide us in a fair and just manner.

The primary question is this: Are our current utilization, production, distribution, and consumption models any longer the best choice for our future? Is it good enough to consider citizens are merely one dimensional consumers? Or are there better ideas afoot?

Would we be better served if all of us were actively engaged as producers, distributors and consumers? Is there a model in place already that could allow us to realize this more rewarding and complex view of ourselves?

Let’s start with a look at our current model for making and provisioning electricity. If we believe that you get three strikes, then today’s centralized generation with grid distribution model is OUT!

Here are the strikes:

Strike 1: Very bad for global climate change - releases far too much sequestered carbon;

Strike 2: Very inefficient — wastes 80% of the resources it uses;

Strike 3: Fails to deliver electricity to over 25% of the world’s population;

Strike 4: It exports energy dollars out of local communities and villages.

Strike 5: Is too risky. It creates too many single points of failure, as can be seen by our history of blackouts. Not to mention creating terrorist targets.

The old model has struck out at bat: even with a fifth strike! Time for it to retire and let a new batter reach the plate.

Electricity is a huge problem. How shall we, for example, get it to where it is not? It would appear that the centralized production and distribution model has failed 25% or more of the worlds people. Perhaps it failed because its core organizing principle is flawed. It also wastes 80%, or more, of the energy it uses. Bad design. It also exports energy dollars out of the local community to who knows where and whose benefit.

A better approach, as the Europeans know, looks to be combined heat and power at the points of demand, at all scales from micro to industrial. It can be as much as 95% efficient in the best cases. It is also naturally and organically peer-to-peer in nature as one unit connects outward to another to form a micro grid for mutual self help and community security. It also re-localizes power generation, keeps energy dollars in the local economy and so forth. It is well know that dollars retained in local economies have a 3X or better multiplier effect on the local economy.

This is what I call the Peer-to-Per Power Economy. The P2P model is quite possibly the most efficient way to manage many of our resources. The P2P use of the internet, Skype is a fine example, is a fine proof of concept of the efficiency advantages that P2P can offer. Further, it supports the idea that every citizen can be all of producer, distributor and consumer — actively engaged in the enterprises of society.

Unfortunately, the Peer-to-Per Power Economy, at least with respect to electricity, is actually illegal in the USA. Only those who have “patents” from the government are allowed to sell electricity across private property boundaries! We need to change these laws and regulations to enable P2P mutual aid societies very much akin to Ben Franklins 18th century creation of mutual insurance companies, fire departments and so forth.

Will our next President fix this and not only enable Micro grids, but actually encourage them? How about a promise of CHP at the White House? In 1994 I was on the team that put the White House on the World Wide Web. In 2009, it will be time to make the White House a show case for Combined Heat and Power and the Peer-to-Peer organizing principal.

One can see that the above discussion about how and where we make electricity is one key to showing that more of the same old same old is not going to give anything other than more of the same old same old we do not like.

The P2P Power Economy is, of course, a disruptive innovation that is required if we want to truly address global climate change. Why required? Because we can no longer afford, allow? tolerate? a power production system that wastes 80% or more of the resources it uses.

Another key resource we are currently mis-managing is the radio spectrum we use for communications. Our 20th century spectrum management model creates artificial scarcities in spectrum that drive up prices and substantially increase the friction, costs and inefficiencies or our communications infrastructure. Given everything we have learned since the 1920s and the early days of radio, we could choose to manage spectrum as an abundance. We can do this if we are willing to embrace Open Spectrum principles, cognitive radios, and dynamic mesh network technologies supporting a Peer-to-Peer spectrum utilization model. This change also supports the notion that we all are naturally producers, distributors and consumers of communications.

In conclusion, we have so far failed to take full advantage of the princples of Peer-to-Peer organization. We are denying ourselves the power of P2P to increase our chances of creating a society truly greater than the sum of its parts. Indeed, the move to a P2P based society is actively obstructed by today’s incumbents who see it as a challenge to their business and political models. The fact of the matter is that it is just these old organizational models, which I call neo-colonial, that have brought us global climate change as an unintended consequence. If we stay with the old models, we choose self destruction. For the chance of a viable future, it is time we looked for some new ideas to guide us.

Can we give our children the freedom and tools to do so? Can we enable them to adopt the power of P2P across domains such as electricity, economics, water management, politics, spectrum management? and so forth? This is where I suspect we have to go if we want to get from where we are today to a better place for all tomorrow.

Notes:

Click here for David Weinberger’s essay on Open spectrum.

Click here for more on “Neo-Colonialism or a Peer to Peer Power Society?”

Click here for more on “Framework for a New Economics & a New Politics”.

Click here for more on “How much longer will tomorrow be like yesterday?“.

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