Distributed Technology

So not so much an emerging trend, but a long delivered promise re-localisation is apparently underway... I heard a recent story on the radio that spoke about the growing eco-power technology industry. What caught my attention was a segment that covered the principle of rewarding community contribution. In somewhere in a small German village is a scheme that does two things. 1 - pays people when they give power back to the national grid (old news) and 2 - pays for providing the local community the heat that is a by product of the energy creation. 

This technology is now at the scale where we could all become mini-power stations - but it is also smart enough to utilise the by-products as well. An finally, the government is smart enough to incentivise people to make the effort to establish these systems. Nice.

This concept of distributed technology is also showing up in the open source hardware platform - Arduino (www.arduino.cc) - which is essentially an enabler that rewards dedication and passion to learning the platform with greater results in people's experiments. The potential of the technology+passion+community+competition equation is probably huge...

Now of course there is a counterpoint to this idea of distribution, as the Swiss government looks to centralise the country's identity - http://www.brandchannel.com/start1.asp?fa_id=492 - recognising the power of brand, their response is homogenisation and consolidation. 

Although there is only a loose link between these ideas, they do throw up an interesting challenge. What is balance between the individual and the wider community in solving problems? How much is carrot (paying for power put back into the national grid), how much is stick (are Switzerland's going to mobilise a brand police?) and how much is enterprise and entrepreneurship (let's see what the community generates with Arduino that isn't just 'toys')?

RT

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