Join Bob Metcalfe, MIT engineer, Harvard mathematician, Internet pioneer, Xerox scientist, Ethernet inventor, Stanford professor, 3Com founder, Cambridge fellow, InfoWorld pundit, and now Polaris partner, for a lively discussion on how lessons learned from the development of the Internet can help shape the future of energy.

Metcalfe believes the lessons learned building the Internet can be applied to the world’s energy problems – it’s a lot about thermodynamics, and sometimes about government policy, but it's much more about networking. Lessons from 63 years of Internet history apply very well to how, over the next 63 years, we'll meet needs for cheap and clean energy. For example, if the Internet is any guide, we'll end up using not less energy, but much more. Promising new sources - negawatts, coal, oil, gas, wind, geothermal, fission, solar, fusion -- will be distributed and networked. The Smart Grid should probably be the Internet, perhaps all the way down to power packet switching. Meantime, beware Washington, trust entrepreneurship, and the energy movement's color should be not green but blue.