Page 29 - Green Builder Magazine Nov-Dec 2017 Issue

CREDIT: PHONLAMAIPHOTO/ISTOCK

CREDIT: ALBERTO MASNOVO/ISTOCK Blessing or curse? Technology offers the potential to ease our lives, but only if the benefits are shared.

Scientists worry that we may be
debt, and living standards are plummeting everywhere. A record 1
billion human beings—nearly one-seventh of the human race—face
hunger and starvation.
Worse, climate change from fossil fuel-based industrial activity
looms on the horizon. Our scientists warn that we face a potentially on the brink of a mass extinction of
cataclysmic change in the temperature and chemistry of the planet, plant and animal life by the end of
which threatens to destabilize ecosystems around the world.
of plant and animal life by the end of the century, imperiling our the century, imperiling our own
Scientists worry that we may be on the brink of a mass extinction
own species’ ability to survive. It is becoming increasingly clear
that we need a new economic narrative that can take us into a more species’ ability to survive.
equitable and sustainable future.
later, radio and television—became the communication medium to
PROLOGUE manage and market the oil-powered auto age, and the mass consumer
By the 1980s, the evidence was mounting that the fossil fuel-driven culture of the Second Industrial Revolution.
industrial revolution was peaking, and that human-induced climate In the mid-1990s, it dawned on me that a new convergence of
change was forcing a planetary crisis of untold proportions. For communication and energy was in the offing. Internet technology
[more than] 30 years, I have been searching for a new paradigm and renewable energies were about to merge to create a powerful
that could usher in a post-carbon era. In my explorations, I came new infrastructure for a Third Industrial Revolution (TIR) that would
to realize that the great economic revolutions in history occur change the world. In the coming era, hundreds of millions of people
when new communication technologies converge with new energy will produce their own green energy in their homes, offices and
systems. New energy regimes make possible the creation of more factories, and share it with each other in an “energy Internet,” just like
interdependent economic activity and expanded commercial we now create and share information online. The democratization
exchange, as well as facilitate denser and inclusive social relationships. of energy will bring with it a fundamental reordering of human
The accompanying communication revolutions become the means relationships, impacting the very way we conduct business, govern
to organize and manage the new temporal and spatial dynamics that society, educate our children and engage in civic life.
arise from new energy systems.
In the 19th century, steam-powered print technology became the SIGNS OF THE TIMES
communication medium to manage the coal-fired rail infrastructure I introduced the Third Industrial Revolution vision at the Wharton
and the incipient national markets of the First Industrial Revolution. School’s Advanced Management Program (AMP), at the University
In the 20th century, electronic communications—the telephone and of Pennsylvania, where I have been a senior lecturer for more

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