At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Friday, Al Gore said Web 2.0 can be utilized to serve a common, but higher, purpose.
“The purpose, I would urge all of you — as many of you as are willing to take it up — is to bring about a higher level of consciousness about our planet and the imminent danger and opportunity we face because of the radical transformation in the relationship between human beings and the Earth,†Mr. Gore said.
According to the Times’ Bits blog, Gore also said, the nation needs to build “an electronet,” a unified national smart grid, with high-voltage, low-loss underground wires that deliver renewable energy from the places that produce it — like the sunny Arizona deserts or the windy Dakota plains — to the cities where the majority of it is used. Such a grid would require a $400 billion investment upfront, but would pay off in just over three years, he said.
The task, to summarize, is to use cloud computing, open source technology and viral networks to share mission critical information that directly leads to environmental upgrades in the nation’s infrastructure.