Bob Metcalfe: Internet Lessons for Energy Problems  Bob Metcalfe
at GreenNet.jpgJoking that "It's easier to teach energy to
entrepreneurs than entrepreneurship to the energy industry,"
Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe entertained the crowd at San
Francisco's Green:Net show with a few lessons the energy
industry can learn from the Internet industry. Including simple
things like dates. Did the Internet begin when Google was
founded in 1998? Or the year the Gore Bill was introduced, 1991?
Arpanet in 1984? He thinks it should be dated to 1946, when the
transistor was invented. "And the year I was born," notes
Metcalfe, "so I'm as old as the Internet."  In his keynote,
Metcalfe described the emerging "Enernet," which he described as
similar to the Internet, and some lessons we can learn by
parallels between the two. Issues like the hardening of
categories. Telephone networks weren't necessarily related to
premise equipment, voice, video and data aren't necessarily
separate categories either: So in the development of