Distributed World E-Book

Simone Malacrida

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

This book, the last of an energy trilogy, outlines a futuristic scenario of a social, energy and political model different from the current one. All aspects that contribute to determining the distributed model through the establishment of the two main pillars, the technological-energy pillar, given by digital energies, and the socio-economic pillar, called the "blue society," are carefully analyzed. A look far beyond the usually proposed predictions of a few decades is constantly present in the writing, and obvious connections are identified between a system of thought and the resulting shared rules that punctuate human life, completing the narrative of a new social structure for a finally sustainable future development.

Leseprobe

Simone Malacrida

Distributed World

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

“DISTRIBUTED WORLD”

ANALYTICAL INDEX

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 | DISTRIBUTED WORLD

CHAPTER 2 | SOCIAL STRUCTURES AND DYNAMICS

CHAPTER 3 | THE CONCENTRATED MODEL

CHAPTER 4 | THIRD INFORMATION REVOLUTION

CHAPTER 5 | DIGITAL ENERGIES

CHAPTER 6 | THE BLUE SOCIETY

CHAPTER 7 | STRATEGIES FOR A DISTRIBUTED FUTURE

NOTE

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“DISTRIBUTED WORLD”

“DISTRIBUTED WORLD”

This book, the last of an energy trilogy, outlines a futuristic scenario of a social, energy and political model different from the current one. All aspects that contribute to determining the distributed model through the establishment of the two main pillars, the technological-energy pillar, given by digital energies, and the socio-economic pillar, called the "blue society," are carefully analyzed. A look far beyond the usually proposed predictions of a few decades is constantly present in the writing, and obvious connections are identified between a system of thought and the resulting shared rules that punctuate human life, completing the narrative of a new social structure for a finally sustainable future development.

Simone Malacrida (1977)

Engineer and writer, has worked on research, finance, energy policy and industrial plants.

“Our dreams and desires change the world.”

Karl Raimund Popper

“If you travel, don't worry about the distance, but about the destination.”

Chinese proverb

ANALYTICAL INDEX

ANALYTICAL INDEX

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INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

NOTE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

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I thought a lot before starting to conceive and write this book. As will already be clear from this introduction, the path has been anything but linear, with sudden accelerations and periods instead of total reflection, returning several times to concepts already addressed.

After all, there is a very profound similarity between life itself and its different expressions, be they writing, history, art, music or science. In fact, by analyzing both at sectoral level and a specific period of time, we can see this tortuosity, a sort of circularity which, however, leads us to different points of arrival compared to where we started.

Over time, various definitions have been given to what has just been described: dialectic, transformation, comparison, change, becoming, evolution. All in different areas, but with the same concept. And, in the same way, the ideas of being, immanence, leitmotiv, memory, return of the identical have been repeatedly contrasted.

This long journey concerning the book could only lead to a completely different result from that expected and, probably, from what the reader himself expects.

This is not a technical book on energy or energies or energy patterns, there are already many of them and anyone can satiate their curiosity. It is not a scientific book, with formulas and first principles. It is not a manual for specialists with industrial and technological indications. Nor is it an economic and geopolitical picture of energy issues or a philosophical and ethical vision of human society based on the different forms of energy.

So what is it? A mixture of all that has just been said without, however, taking a definite form is already a good indication. But that's not enough.

This book is primarily a social book, a kind of human account of the current and future society, taking into consideration various personal points of view (in the sense of objective points but considered subjectively) with some common concepts at the core. A symphony written with words and not with musical notes, read aloud and not sung, and as such based on very similar rules and mechanisms. Who has an ear trained, even a little, to the different and innumerable compositions of art music (I adhere to the definition given by maestro Maurizio Pollini [1] as opposed to the more often used expression of "classical music"), knows how to understand when there are anticipations, references, common themes, solos, chorals, choruses, digressions, fugues, counterpoints and so on. And the same goes for writing, as Thomas Mann already mentioned, in a much more eminent way than mine [2].

And for those wishing to further explore the reference to music, I strongly recommend listening to the works of Ludwig van Beethoven [3] to understand how there are continuous references and anticipations. The same was, at a much more infinitesimal level, for this "energy trilogy" which concludes with this paper.

Therefore this is a different book than usual, both from those in circulation and dealing with similar and contingent topics, and from those already written previously by myself.

And this diversity is immediately evident, in the setting and in what will be said. So diversity in form, in substance, in the way of communicating and tackling problems, overturning some general statements and some positions taken when it comes to energy and society.

This introduction is also completely anomalous, as it is not "dry", as befits a technical paper or an essay, but rather it is an additional initial chapter and, in fact, it is quietly more extensive than some chapters of the book itself!

In the introduction, as in the rest of the book, arguments will be exposed at first glance not directly connected to what one might initially think when addressing the issue of the energy society.

Well aware of the dismay and initial surprise in front of this, my invitation is to let yourself be carried away by the succession of arguments without opposing some pre-established schemes from the superstructures we have in us, deriving from our training, from the education received, from our underlying history and culture.

After all, this book should also be read as a story and a journey; and therefore certain personal references (in this introduction and later) should not surprise, above all to frame the overall vision.

A sort of eclectic narration that reflects a well-defined landing point and point of arrival in the personal vision of the author and that, with the typical limitations of human nature, an attempt is made to transmit to others in the characteristic form that has distinguished the " historicus " man by his predecessors, i.e. through a written document.

Just to confirm what was stated in this first taste, for the first time I wrote this introduction before writing the actual book (in fact it is my habit to do the exact opposite, first write the book then do the introduction as a sort of synopsis and initial hat), with minimal revision after completion of the entire book.

However, the reader will have to be satisfied with savoring only this final version!

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Brief history of a journey

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Before proceeding, an excursus should be made to frame in which contexts and with which reasoning this book was born. This will certainly facilitate the reading and the general setting in the same way as an archaeological excavation helps to better understand the habits of a civilization, otherwise relegated to simple written testimonies.

First of all, I didn't study "energy" subjects. I hadn't chosen this path for studies and I didn't think it could become such an exciting topic for me to write books. Of course, my technical and scientific preparation had touched the fundamental principles of energy, such as thermodynamics and chemistry, but it was still a compendium of general training. Years later, I can say it was a good thing. Hardly anyone who is immersed in a system and knows every single detail can bring a vision from the outside and generate the necessary changes. Albert Einstein [4] remembered it and history is full of anecdotes and quotes about it, it would be enough to analyze who were the scientists who revolutionized physics at the beginning of the twentieth century. Not the emeritus and eminent professors, but their young students.

My first approach to the world of energy dates back to 2006, afour years after graduating in engineering. Because of my interests at the time, I tried three different ways to start framing the energy problem. So, I immediately tried a holistic and non-sectoral approach.

On the one hand, I was interested in technological and engineering aspects, typically related to numbers, tables, graphs and trends. On the other hand, I focused attention on the role of basic and applied research in support of individual energy technologies. Finally, I tried to understand the economic and financial ties underlying the different forms of energy. These three approaches were mixed month after month on the basis of the readings and the chosen bibliography.

This first phase kept me busy for almost two years, this is not the place to recall some fundamental writings, also because they can easily be found in the bibliography of "From oil to the green economy".

But something was missing in this picture. The more I tried to delve into the energy issue, the more I felt the reference system slip away. I told myself that there were too many conflicting and antithetical opinions and, for this reason, I decided to take part in the first Energy Festival in 2008, held in the city of Lecce [5].

That was a milestone in the journey. Having the opportunity to participate live in debates and conferences with industry experts, all in a few days, allowed me both to expand certain visions and to become aware of the main problem. The data and numbers are, too often, cited only in part, to deny or confirm pre-established theses. In a nutshell, an ideological interpretation of the data takes place which, on the other hand, precisely because numbers should be aseptic.

This convinced me more and more to write a small memorandum for personal use in order to understand in which direction the energy world would go. Now it was time to produce something new, after having assimilated so much.

During the summer of 2008, a first draft of the structure took shape, but it took an external event to finally convince me to write. That event was the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 [6]. In the wake of some predictions made six months earlier, they began to ask me for opinions and articles on the matter. Combining two and a half years of studies on the world of energy and research and this drive to write, the structure of my first book arose.

And what at the beginning was supposed to be a memorandum made up of numbers alone, expanded, assuming the connotations of a real discourse on energy, tackled from all the points of view that at the time seemed important and fundamental to me. This is essentially the story of the aforementioned "From oil to the green economy" , the book that I thought was the only one I would write on energy and which, as many other writers have pointed out, traced a sort of necessity, as it was the book that I had not yet found on the market.

It took me almost a year to complete it and, as usual, the final result was very different from what was initially conceived. That memorandum I had in mind on energy numbers is essentially the first part of the book, while, chapter after chapter, I realized how vast the subject was and with myriad implications and how "complex" it was. I dedicated the end of the book and the introduction (which, as already mentioned, I wrote at the end) to complexity.

Then, by a sudden twist of fate, everything stopped for a year. Finding a publisher wasn't easy and I kept adjusting the various chapters, putting updated references to the economic crisis that afflicted the world in 2009-2010 and to some notable events, removing some tables and some graphs and giving the book the definitive title.

Before proceeding, a curiosity about the title. It is a transliteration of a famous book by Stephen Hawking [7], "From the Big Bang to black holes" which has greatly marked my existence, because, during the last year of high school, it was the book with which I started a path of personal study of astrophysics and relativity. Literally, it was the springboard towards understanding difficult and very technical subjects, but which the interest aroused by disclosure has allowed us to overcome. A further annotation: also the title of this paragraph is taken from the same book by Hawking, in fact in the original English edition the title was "A Brief History of Time", (we can say, however, that the Italian translation is much better than the original !).

Until the beginning of 2011, this was therefore the picture, for me definitive, on the world of energy.

In the meantime other themes intersected, economic, financial and geopolitical issues, the fundamental theme of water and the generational issue of contemporary society and I had started stable writing collaborations with some Italian magazines in the sector, as well as self-producing e-books on previous topics.

With the advent of 2011, at least three new elements broke through the previous panorama. The Arab Spring, the Fukushima nuclear accident and the protest movements in the West following the European crisis. But, as happened years before, all these stimuli needed a personal "casus belli" to induce me to evolve and write something different and innovative.

The key event turned out to be a conference in Rome, held on 10 May 2011. Invited as a collaborator of the organizing magazine (Ambientarsi [8]), I made a superficial but very significant acquaintance with Claudia Bettiol [9]. Speaking of the energy problem, he introduced me to the revolutionary aspect, the social one, which until then had been latently present in me. In less than two weeks, I not only met his closest collaborators, but I myself began to take an active part in a common project.

The reading of "Heart and environment" gave way to a reshuffling of the concepts that I had previously learned until they resulted in a new vision, summarized in the subsequent book "Renewable revolution" . All this happened in a few months, so much so that at the end of summer 2011, the book was ready with a preface by Bettiol herself.

Having taken the decision to present it as an e-book, the chronology has shattered the logical order, since this book, consistent in facts, exposition and reasoning, saw the light a good six months before "From oil to the green economy" .

Reading "Heart and environment" introduced the dualism necessary to question certain previous visions, exposing a feature very often hidden in Western books: our total lack of knowledge of the Eastern world and of the underlying philosophy. We will have the opportunity to evaluate these topics later, but there is no shadow of a doubt that to us that world is "other" above all in the way of dealing with problems.

I only found a similar vision, in other fields, in Herman Hesse [10], not so much in "Siddhartha" or "The steppe wolf" , but in "Narcissus and Goldmund" . I propose this parallelism to interested readers, obviously in totally different spheres, to have a first attempt at describing the oriental way of thinking.

With "Renewable Revolution" a path was also outlined that was not initially foreseen. That of a trilogy dedicated to energy.

I must say that numbers have always fascinated me, especially three, seven and ten and it is worth pausing for a moment, just to understand what is hidden in the structures of these books. First of all, the concept of trilogy refers to other thoughts and works, such as Virgil [11], Dante Alighieri [12], Immanuel Kant [13], the dialectic of Georg Hegel [14] and, at least in my personal view, the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski [15].

In particular, the last two mentioned are particularly fitting, given that each book of this trilogy is complete in itself, but takes on a deeper meaning if framed in a global perspective and given that, especially in "From oil to the green economy" there is that alternation between thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis typical of Hegelian logic and which literally marks the rhythm of the book. Then the three are associated with some divine concepts ( Trinity, the triangle and so on).

For the seven, the game is soon revealed: in ancient times seven were the Sages, the known planets, the virtues, the heavens of the Ptolemaic system and, more recently, the novels contained in Marcel Proust's " recherche " [16] . It should therefore come as no surprise that both this book and "Renewable Revolution" consist of seven chapters.

The ten, in addition to being the composition of three and seven, certainly refers to the decalogues (of divine origin, but also secular like the aforementioned Kieslowski) and to the decimal metric system and the reader can find an explicit reference in the first book of this trilogy , with three chapters divided into three parts and the introduction which closes the circle of the decade.

"Distributed world" is therefore a book that is part of a much broader scope and which concludes the energy trilogy that began years ago.

From the historical, social, geopolitical, environmental and energy caesuras of recent years (we recall among them the global economic and financial crisis, the European crisis, the Arab spring, the protest movements in the Western world, the generational question, the Fukushima disasters and of the Deepwater Horizon platform , the increase in the price of raw materials, the shifting of the global geopolitical axis) the idea of the "Renewable Revolution" was born as a new and innovative response to the energy problem. To close the trilogy, a further leap of perspective and vision was needed.

This leap was given by three successive readings and by an epiphany I had in the summer of 2011 while I was in Sardinia on the very concept of the adjective "distributed" and on how it could be connected to energy and society.

The readings, from which I have drawn invaluable ideas and reflections, deal with energy, the economy and society from three complementary points. In the first place "Blue economy" by Gunter Pauli [17], closely followed by "Sogni ed energie digitali" by the aforementioned Bettiol (a fundamental book as it was read at the same time as the epiphany written a little above) and, finally, " Third Industrial Revolution" by Jeremy Rifkin [18].

With this baggage of new knowledge, it became natural to give form and, subsequently, substance to "Distributed World" .

Wanting to simplify to the extreme, the first book of the energy trilogy is a point of the situation up to before the epochal event, the great global crisis that erupted in 2008, and describes very well that world, those situations and those conclusions that arose then. The second book instead describes the revolution that is taking place in this period, that is today, in the current news and what are the mechanisms of change and the reasons for this change.

"Distributed world" is instead the narration of a possible future destination that already shows its characteristics and peculiarities today.

The short story of this journey to understand the origins of this book is coming to an end and it's time to start dancing.

Socialize energy

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The energy issue cannot be relegated only to a "technical" problem in which engineers, scientists and researchers, technicians in fact, have more rights than others just because they are considered experts.

This is a common mistake which is often perpetrated with enormous damage to the entire community. Before understanding why it is a mistake, let's look at a practical case, that of nuclear power.

When it comes to nuclear power plants, one of the major objections to scrutinizing opinions through referendums or polls is that the "ignorant vulgar" cannot be put on a par with super-specialized technicians who have spent years of study to acquire those skills.

This reasoning is dangerous for at least three different reasons. First of all, it undermines the fundamental principles of democracy and at least two hundred years of battles and claims (from the principle of "one person, one vote" to that of universal and inalienable rights), and also presupposes a caste and class-based society. In fact, if a non-nuclear engineer has no right to comment on the construction of a nuclear power plant, as "incompetent", what right do non-economists have to question the financial manoeuvres? And the non-labour lawyers on the regulations that regulate the labor market? What about non-doctors on the ethical issues surrounding cloning and GMOs? What about the non-military on whether or not to take war action? It would mean returning to an idea of a society led by the "best", but we know very well from historical analyzes that these companies did not work and were almost extinct.

The last reason why this argument is wrong concerns precisely the energy issue. It is wrong to think that the construction of a nuclear power plant is only a technical-engineering fact linked to the costs-benefits and efficiency of the same. Does a technician or a professor of nuclear plants have the skills to understand the trend of the real estate market within the radius of 50 Km the construction of the new plant? How will land and house prices change? How agricultural production will inevitably have to move elsewhere? How will this impact public opinion on local government systems (and therefore on municipal and regional elections)? The answer is no. And the reason is very simple: energy is a holistic, all-encompassing and all-encompassing issue, and therefore nobody has “The Solution” in their pocket and addressing the entire subject from a single point of view is wrong.

This means that all of us can and must have our say on the energy issue.

Energy is intrinsically linked to life. It applies to life on this planet (without the energy coming from the Sun, there would be no form of animal and vegetable life, the cycle of water and the seasons) and to the life of each of us.

Man, like any other living being, is an energy machine. Food serves exactly this, to fuel the energy cycle of our cells.

Furthermore, the energy we produce and consume serves only one thing: to satisfy our needs and our customs. Since the discovery of fire, energy has served to improve the quality of human life.

Talking about and being interested in energy is therefore a way of talking about and being interested in life itself.

And life cannot be deprived of a single aspect. Life is not just a "technical" (being born, growing, reproducing, dying) or "economic" (being born, consuming, working, dying) or "political" or "environmental" or "sentimental" issue. Life is all this and more, in a continuous and inseparable mix.

Therefore energy, precisely because it is so similar to life, is not to be faced with simplistic visions. Energy is complex, in the sense of complexity theory, as already explained both at the end of the first book of this trilogy and at the beginning of the second book. Energy involves every aspect of human life, including some fields that are not at first sight related, such as sociology, marketing and sales dynamics, art , creativity and the conception of new needs and products.

Energy therefore has a fundamentally social trait. And this is a social book, which looks at technology, the economy, politics, the environment and history as concomitant aspects of life declined as an energy society.

Here is the main reason for the title of this paragraph. We literally have to "socialize" energy, in the sense of discussing and addressing energy from a social point of view.

The social aspect becomes fundamental when an object or an idea comes into contact with each of us, with our daily experience.

On closer inspection, some forms of energy have already become social and are the ones we have been dealing with for the longest time. Think of oil or coal.

If we carried out tests related to analogies without giving the mind time to elaborate, the first images that each of us would focus on when speaking of oil would be (I quote only the most frequent ones and not in a logical order): petrol stations, costs of fuels, your own car, the oil price graph, tanker accidents, the figure of an Arab sheikh, oil rigs.

Almost all of these images concern the social sphere of oil, not the technology necessary for its extraction, refining, transport and distribution. Indeed, most people are totally ignorant of energy technologies related to oil, but there is no doubt that each of us talks about excise duties on fuel to make conversation even with unknown people, perhaps at the bar or on the train!

Oil has therefore penetrated people's daily lives through certain end uses and products, above all the automobile, and from that moment on it has taken on a social character, responding to the mobility needs of a globalized world, but also allowing its image to be glimpsed from environmental damage, wars fought in its name, and economic oligopolies.

Similarly, coal is for us an "old" and "dirty" energy source and this derives above all from indirect knowledge, since today hardly anyone has coal stoves in their homes anymore. But the past and the culture transmitted, from the stories of the miners (we only mention "Germinal" by Emile Zola [19] and the tragedy of Marcinelle [20]), to the atmospheric pollution of coal dust, up to diseases such as silicosis, characterized the social image of coal.

And a similar social campaign, but in other ways antithetical, was carried out in Italy years ago on natural gas saying "methane gives you a hand" and in fact today this energy source is considered the "cleanest" of the fossil energies, not so much for a scientific discourse, as for a widespread opinion among the public.

Fossil energies have therefore already been socialized precisely because of their long history in contact with human beings. Renewable energies, on the other hand, are still not very social, it is here that the field of socialization must make great strides.

In fact, if we talk about "solar" almost everyone comes to mind the solar panel, so it's about technology and not about sociality. When solar or other renewable technologies (therefore disregarding the energy vector) are associated with different concepts, then we will have made the renewable revolution, as I already mentioned in the second book of this trilogy.

The need to socialize renewable energies is even more pressing if we think of their "soul". Unlike fossil sources, there are no concentrations and reserves located in any place, but are distributed almost uniformly. And this means that, in order to obtain global efficiency and effectiveness, it is necessary to relocate the installations. For now, the construction of wind or solar or hydroelectric plants has not allowed the majority of us to come into direct contact with these energy sources, but the approach is rapidly changing.

Only when renewable energies enter our homes will they socialize, because we will have direct contact with them. If we then consider that, due to their nature, it is impossible to hide them (a solar panel or a wind turbine can hardly be hidden in a boiler room located in the cellar, because they would not work!), then we understand that there are different parameters to take into consideration , beyond technology and performance.

A comparison should be made to fully understand the multiple consequences.

Anyone who has visited a medieval castle or a Renaissance palace has been able to notice how the most decorated and visible rooms were the ballrooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, dining rooms and reception rooms, but never the kitchens. The kitchens were relegated to the basements and the reason was simple: the servants lived in the kitchens and had to be isolated from the guests. Therefore, for centuries, the kitchen has been judged and conceived only for its functional aspects.

However, contemporary society has "socialized" the kitchen. In today's homes, the kitchen represents a fundamental part and there is no master or hostess who is not inclined to show their kitchen to guests. This is because, today, the kitchen embodies a certain vision of whoever owns it, it is personalized on everyone's tastes and is no longer hidden, but put on display. There are dozens and dozens of specialized kitchen furnishing magazines.

The cause and effect was disruptive. We no longer choose a kitchen for its functional and performance aspects, but for its design, colour, fashion, comfort and the presence of space. We therefore choose on the basis of sociological parameters that do not only have to do with technology and price. The kitchen must be "pleasing", be beautiful and welcoming.

This had a huge consequence. New businesses and new sectors have opened up for businesses and craftsmen who have understood that social change that took place many years ago.

Renewable energies are about to experience the same transformation. Having to be exposed and in direct contact with us, they must necessarily "please", be beautiful and attractive. This is just one of the possible businesses not yet explored by companies (which have not yet understood the leap from industrial to residential and domestic). With this transformation, energy will be socialized and will greatly change the social paradigm and everything we are going to say in this book. One of the peculiar aspects will be the union of art and energy technologies, with the birth of artistic movements such as that of Energitismo [21].

A striking example of this change can be borrowed from what happened to flat screen televisions, at least in the Italian case . In 2005, there were already predictions that indicated how, in four or five years, the world of televisions would have evolved in terms of end users (since in terms of research and technology the step had already been taken years earlier) from tube cathodic to flat screen (plasma or liquid crystal) ones. The companies in the sector took the forecasts made by national and supranational bodies as a reference and understood that they had to change their business within four years. In 2006, however, it happened that, thanks to an aggressive campaign by the end distributors, users were exposed to the idea of a new product, no longer the classic television, but the home theater and the opportunity for sale to the general public was the championships of the soccer world that year. Marketing and mass psychology led to an avalanche effect which, in fact, put the classic CRT televisions out of business because they were considered "old" and unattractive, despite the practically free prices. Homegrown factories, not having understood the change, have closed their doors and we mainly have Korean, Chinese and Japanese televisions at home. The statistics predicted from above have been surpassed by reality itself, as those data did not consider the social aspect.

Likewise, the socialization of renewable energy will change the tables and references taken as assumed by all international agencies.

Socializing energy is therefore not only a correct and complete way to understand the energy issue, but it is also the only way to explore new business models and guarantee an industrial and economic future for many companies today.

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To be clear

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Before delving into the intricacies of the book, we must define, for various reasons, a suitable language and terminology. Language is a fundamental prerequisite for the human species since it is thanks to it that the Homo sapiens species has evolved so much and is equipped with considerably superior means compared to any other species.

Language is also the basis of "artificial" creations such as the Morse alphabet or mathematical symbology, so much so that Friedrich Schleiermacher [22] recalled "the only presupposition of hermeneutics is language" and Hans Gadamer [23] reiterated the same concept by placing this quote at the beginning of a part of his main philosophical work "Truth and Method" .

Finally, language allows the creation of a story and a story, giving a marked impression to whoever owns it, instilling feelings, hopes, but also doubts and anxieties (an experiment of the effect of language on the reader is given in some final parts of James Joyce's Ulysses [24]).

For all these reasons, it is essential to define a precise terminology, also because, otherwise, there would be constant confusion and misunderstandings and the very essence of the concepts would be lost due to these drawbacks (“ stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus ” [25]). The world of energy, and of renewable energies in particular, is at high risk in this sense since different schools of thought flourish which use different terms to indicate the same thing or identical terms for disparate topics.

Let's start by saying that energy is not renewable or fossil, it is the energy sources that are. And that electricity and hydrogen are not so much energy sources as energy carriers.

Having said this, in the common vernacular, talking about renewable energy sources or renewable energies is substantially the same thing and, therefore, in order not to weigh down the diction we will more often say "renewable energies", meaning however the terms just exposed as completely equivalent.

But renewable energies tout court will not make the "revolution". As we shall see, it is unthinkable to replace gas or coal-fired plants with wind and solar farms to trigger radical social change. It takes a further step given by the contribution of digital technologies, ie by all those innovations introduced by information technology, electronics and telecommunications since the eighties of the twentieth century.

It will be the union of energy and information that will generate the flywheel of the revolution. This means that renewable energies with digital technology will make that leap. Instead of the phrase just written, we prefer to synthesize everything in digital energies. We will therefore talk about a digital car and not an electric car with digital technology, a digital energy system and not a renewable energy system managed by digital technology. En passant, the English translations digital car [26] and digital energy system, DES [27] are registered trademarks.

The digital energies, all interconnected with each other, form a "super-network", whose physical and technological backbone lies in the smart- grids and whose global system (therefore the network, the management, the single end devices, the transmission and so on) goes by the name of digital energy system.

In this context, the adjective “distributed” comes into play. We could say that digital energies are by their very nature distributed as well as the digital energy system; in English the above acronym could extend into DDES (Distributed DES). Having understood the existing connection, most of the time we will omit this adjective which is however intrinsic in the very nature of the speech.

The distributed model is present as the structure above the digital energy system. This model also includes all the social, economic, geopolitical, industrial and environmental consequences of the digital energy system which, however, is only attributable to the more properly physical, technological and energy part.

The distributed model is therefore the broadest perspective in which digital energies can be framed, having achieved the socialization of energy mentioned in the previous paragraph. Describing the probable future of a distributed model is the essential purpose of this book. So why is it called "Distributed World" rather than "Distributed Model" ?

Because, in the author's personal vision, the distributed model fits snugly and coherently into a "universal energy flow" that pervades the entire world, in line with what has already been supported by many Eastern philosophies through the concept of ch'ì . These topics will become clearer with the exposition of the first chapters of the book.

In addition to the distributed world and digital energies, the subtitle also mentions the blue society. Also in this case we try to frame the terminology adopted.

The concentrated model (the one of yesterday and today) has generated a certain type of society with "concentrated" characteristics, i.e. oligopolistic, classist, top-down, pyramid-shaped and full of inequalities.

The green economy, conceived only as the replacement of energy sources (from fossil to renewable ones), has substantially failed, as it re-proposes the same fractures and inequalities of the concentrated model, simply in a different sauce.

The evolution towards a different model of society, a distributed model of society, was tackled by the aforementioned Pauli, identifying the solution in the blue economy. However, the economy is only a part of the social aspect, therefore it seems limiting to speak only of the blue economy (as we will see, too much space has been given to the economy since the 1981 world deregulation and it is as if we were living in an economic-financial dictatorship) . In the same way, Rifkin outlines what for him is the model of the future, that is the collaborative society. However, you can be collaborative, without necessarily being "blue".

The union of these two visions, the overcoming of the green economy in the blue economy and the advent of the collaborative society, gives rise to the "blue society" which is the social, economic, geopolitical and environmental alter ego of digital energies (conceived as a whole of technology, industry and energy).

Ultimately, the blue society and digital energies are the two inseparable and interacting pillars of the distributed model which, in turn, is part of a wider distributed world.

This explains the title and subtitle of this book, with simple linguistic and terminological arguments.

A little note about the subtitles of the other two books of this trilogy.

"From oil to the green economy" was subtitled "energy sources between numbers, society and research" thus identifying what were the pillars from which I started years ago to address the energy issue and also giving, as already mentioned, a dialectical vision Hegelian. On the other hand, in "Renewable Revolution" , the "new way of conceiving alternative energies" responded to the need to change point of view, socializing renewable energies.

Before concluding this paragraph, we must ask ourselves what la Third Industrial Revolution described by Rifkin is and how it fits into what has been said now. The answer is quite simple. It represents the probable transitional phase between today's society and the distributed model as la First Industrial Revolution characterized the passage from the agricultural and feudal system to the industrial one.

This book is therefore not a description of this transition phase, but an attempt to approach the model and the distributed world directly.

With this terminology and with this language, we are able to understand why the models to be adopted in the future are completely different from those known up to now.

Different models for a different world

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As already mentioned in this introduction and as amply explained in " Renewable Revolution" , there have been clear signs of change since 2007-2008. These signals are not sporadic and random, but are all interconnected and we will be aware of this in the exposition of the topics. We are therefore dealing with correlated phenomena which are different manifestations of the same problem, the global crisis of the contemporary social model which, from now on, we will define as a concentrated model.

The world is therefore changing in every area, be it social, political, economic, industrial, technological, energy or environmental. We are preparing to live in a world that is profoundly different from what we have known and from what our fathers or older brothers have told us, a world in which the granite certainties of the past have crumbled under the weight of existing contradictions and tensions consequent.

Thinking of proposing again in such a context, the same solutions of the past, is not only misleading, but bankruptcy. It is unthinkable to face new problems with old schemes, on pain of the continuous chase for patched up and never definitive solutions.

This phase is the current one, in which each of us can ascertain the total fallacy of the global and local governance institutions precisely because they re-propose outdated and destructive schemes. It is not possible to solve the world crisis for the simple reason that the different solutions proposed have arisen from the same areas in which the crisis itself was born!

About crisis. By now adjectives of all kinds have been given, economic, financial, political, social, industrial, energy, environmental crisis to refer to a particular aspect of the same. In order to respect a common language, we will use all these adjectives in this book, but one thing must be clear: it is a crisis of the System, in other words, it is the System that is in crisis. Therefore this is not a passing crisis or like many others that occurred in the recent past, but it is the consequence of a world in decline.

There are four ways to react to these epochal crises: ignoring them, fighting them, giving in to despair or building something new.

The first reaction is to reduce these total changes to mere mishaps and therefore to totally ignore the nature of the crisis. This phenomenon includes broad spectrums of thought including the denial of the crisis ("we're all fine", "the restaurants are all full"), the identification of one or more scapegoats ("it's China's fault!", " it's the euro's fault!”), the underestimation of the consequences (“nothing will change anyway”, “it can't rain forever”).

Once the importance of the systemic crisis has been acknowledged, someone tries to fight it as in the past counter-revolutions were concocted to stop revolutions, attempts as unrealistic as they were futile. History has repeatedly rejected this way of proceeding, perpetrated by those who, not even with the revolution already underway, are aware of what is happening (the case of Louis XVI two days before the storming of the Bastille is emblematic, an episode that I recalled at the end of “Renewable Revolution” ).

Giving in to despondency is typical of those societies which see themselves besieged and which think they are losing their past privileges. This happened in all those Empires shortly before their collapse with the consequent fear of the "barbarians" and with the regret of the good old days. In these societies, there isn't a generational question, in the sense that even young people think like "old people", that is, like those who, rather than build something new, prefer to take refuge in the defense of what already exists.

Finally, whoever thinks and builds something new is tied to a social model that will be the dominant one, once the system in crisis has been replaced. Ideas, ferments, the Renaissance (understood as a mass of new initiatives and the construction of an innovative system of relationships) will be born from these people. These are young people and companies, regardless of chronological age and they are that handful of human beings capable of directing change.

The real question to ask, with this reference framework, is where we are positioning ourselves, understood as Italians, Europeans and Westerners. There is no doubt that, based on news and current events, the first three categories are the predominant ones and not the fourth. And there is no doubt that every person with common sense wants to be with someone who builds something successful, that is with the fourth category.

So what is happening if there is this dualism between will and action?

What is happening is that the Western model has entered a crisis. The crisis is ours, our way of thinking and acting. And it is others, mainly Orientals (Chinese and Indian above all) but also Latin Americans, who belong to the fourth category.

It is happening that the world is no longer tied to a bipolar geopolitics (capitalist West against communist East), Cold War, the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain, the two superpowers USA-Ussr have been gone for a long time. In the energy field it is no longer true that the United States – Europe axis represents energy consumers and the Middle East its producers. In the technological and economic fields, Western companies no longer hold the primacy. Hardly anything is decided anymore with the G-7 or G-8, but at least the G-20 is needed. And our ruling class, meaning by it the political, industrial, managerial, trade union, intellectual and university class, does not seem to be prepared and has not understood this change.

Not understanding this irreversible evolution is an error that cannot be remedied because it reflects a way of thinking linked to now obsolete archetypes. An error of this kind is also present in Rifkin's latest book, "Third Industrial Revolution" , in which, with all the enormous merits of this reading (to be recommended to anyone who wants to understand a fundamental part of the energy and industrial question), one has a clear vision of the new geopolitical and economic situation.

Describing in detail the cultural and economic movements of the USA, what is happening at the level of the European Community and the consequent decisions of public opinion, unfortunately (or fortunately, it depends on the point of view) is no longer enough to outline the current situation, let alone the future one . Any decision by the Ministries of the People's Republic of China or India regarding energy plans or incentive plans for the industrial sector is far more important and has greater consequences even than events considered momentous until recently, such as the US presidential election or the formation of a new Commission within the European Union. We had this certainty with the Copenhagen meeting in 2009 and with the substantial failure of the European and American photovoltaic companies in 2011 following the Chinese policy.

One cannot fail to consider the new global geopolitical and economic order, with the fundamental role of China and India and with their cultural background, totally different from ours.

The weakness of the USA and Europe and the sense of despondency that pervades these societies are counterbalanced by the hopes of entire generations of young Chinese and Indians for whom this epochal crisis is not the end of the world, rather it is the beginning of a new one. .

If we Westerners still want to play a role, not a subordinate one, and put our experience and culture at the service of everyone, we must literally shake off the sense of superiority that pervades us and, above all, we must turn our gaze to the future, imagining and building a new model of social development.

The current paradigm can no longer be reproposed, it is no longer possible to dialogue with schemes anchored to the post-war period, with institutions and companies linked to the declining model. One cannot think of implementing a revolution with those who now have the command levers of the concentrated model in their hands because they themselves will prefer a slow, almost anesthetized evolution to manage small changes from above and continue to perpetrate today's model, but in forms different. All this even if the overall efficiency of the transition is significantly lower!

The great challenge of building a society that responds to current and future needs can be won if we understand how the distributed model, declined both in digital energies and in blue society, has all the characteristics to heal the current crises and to restore impetus and vitality to a framework that is vice versa uncertain and doubtful in its practical implications.

The three revolutions

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Given that in the exposition of the topics of this book, the central point will not be given by a historicism on industrial revolutions, we immediately present at the beginning what is meant and the internal and connected mechanisms of these epochal changes.

First of all, we shouldn't talk about industrial revolutions because the adjective is too limiting in a single area and we should rather talk about social revolutions, also because the term "industrial" was fine for the first and second change of this kind, but perhaps it is not so suitable for the third one we are going to describe. However, the meaning of industrial revolution has become so common, in its broadest sense, as to induce this same terminology in almost all writings and, therefore, it is preferable to adhere also in this case.

Prior to 1800, human society was almost exclusively tied to agriculture and commerce, and these two sectors absorbed most of the living people. For each individual specialization, a quantity of energy was required that could be satisfied with manual labor of man (we also include the condition of servile and slavery), with the help of domesticated animals (mainly horses and cattle) and with the use of purpose-built tools (we can think of all tools or weapons or windmills or watermills). In addition to that, wood provided the energy needed for heating houses and water. So manual energy, renewable energy (waterways and wind) and fossil energy from wood responded to man's needs in terms of transport, heating and daily life.

The societies built on this energy plant were mainly feudal in nature, with a widespread aristocracy, a center of power located in a king or an emperor and with a very important part given by the merchant bourgeoisie.

Towards the end of the 1700s, however, it happened that modern science had delved into the knowledge of thermodynamics, highlighting for the first time the enormous energy potential available simply by producing steam and using it for various uses. To heat the water, a fuel with a high calorific potential was needed and wood was not enough. The choice, if we can speak of choice, fell on coal. Through the enormous power released, the energy produced per capita multiplied and the steam engine became the central fulcrum of production and transport. Commercial and artisanal activities soon turned into industries with well-defined machinery and dedicated and specialized personnel, the train and the railway lines supplanted horse-drawn transport and even coal-fired ships were considered a substitute for sailing ships. In the same period, newspapers began to spread widely and with them a new way of communicating and making information and culture. The existing political system, given by the aristocracy, lost power with revolutions (the French one above all) or liberation movements (the battles against European colonialism in America) or with the loss of the ruling class in favor of the industrial bourgeoisie. New social classes were born, above all capitalists and proletarians and new social problems (salary, working hours, children's and women's rights, trade union associations), cities and landscapes completely changed their appearance, giving birth to those urban suburbs and workers and emptying the countryside of laborers, while the first signs of pollution and the first diseases associated with it began to spread. In general, there were completely new tensions and also a first attempt to democratize power.

Everything briefly described above goes under the name of the First Industrial Revolution and happened over a period of about 50 years, with some events occurring earlier, and others as unforeseen or predictable consequences. The society resulting from this revolution was characterized as totally different from the one that existed before, if we want the first non-agricultural society of humanity, and this change is well known to us, above all from the indirect evidence of novels, writings, chronicles and descriptions of the era. That society left its mark on the entire history of the nineteenth century, both in positive and negative terms (the increased power available also made it possible to increase the destructiveness and pervasiveness of wars) and it is for this reason that the term revolution it is suitable and fitting.

About a century later, another radical change in world society took place. The scientific and technological invention of the internal combustion engine brought to the fore the importance of a new energy source: oil; thanks to it, the engines were able to untie themselves from the steam and run directly with a liquid fuel, properly refined. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the first oil wells began to be drilled and discovered and the use of this energy source gave way to new means of transport such as cars and planes. In the meantime, new means of communication supplanted newspapers for their mass diffusion. It dealt with everything related to electromagnetism, therefore, in chronological order, the telegraph, telephone, radio and television. Electricity and the power grid entered the daily life of advanced societies, changing lifestyles and giving rise to the market for consumer goods, such as household appliances. At an economic and financial level, the oil and car oligopolies replaced those of coal and trains, and at a political level those mass regimes grew, corresponding to such widespread mass production, such as the European and Japanese totalitarianisms and the clash between the two great philosophies of social structure of the twentieth century, capitalism and communism. Pollution became gradually increasing and also the disruptive effect of wars to the point of generating global problems (greenhouse effect, ozone hole and nuclear arsenals). La Second Industrial Revolution took hold in about 40 years and resulted in the entire history of the twentieth century.

Basically, this is the company that has just passed, the one that has entered a crisis, the same one that many think can still be re-proposed in the future!

What many have not yet understood is that this type of society is now outdated because another revolution has taken over, the third and we will have the certainty of this from the few lines that will follow.

For about fifteen years there have already been communication technologies that have surpassed radio and television, for example mobile telephony, but above all the Internet, and which have caused social upheavals and the reversal of roles that were previously well defined. Technology and science then designed, and made commercially available, a series of products suitable for the production of energy from renewable sources and the models deriving from the previous industrial revolution began to show the flaws and systemic crises, such as the economic financial or social or political representation.

All this is news, if not already history, and should make us understand how we are in the midst of a change that will lead human society to different solutions and approaches, just as the previous social revolutions mentioned in this paragraph have done.

Rather than explore every detail of this change and where it will lead us (which will be done throughout the entire book), we prefer to fix a couple more concepts.

In addition to the three revolutions presented here in chronological order, within each single movement described there are three other (sub)-revolutions necessary to trigger that sudden change. It is clear that the two concomitant conditions are an energy revolution and a technological-information revolution that interpenetrate each other, resulting in one driving force behind the other. And the third element is given by an upheaval of the existing economic and political structures. All these three pillars are already happening in today's world to confirm the discourse exposed here and, by similarity to what happened, it can be said that it will take 40 years to complete the change, but 20 of them have already passed! Perhaps without realizing it (as in all the other cases mentioned after all), but we are already in the midst of the revolution!

A final note should be made about the origin and the leaders of the revolution. There is no doubt that in the early nineteenth century England was the first country to characterize itself as an industrialist, closely followed by Western Europe (France and Germany above all) and only later by the United States. Spain, for example, due to its colonial past it remained out of the first stages of industrialization and this explains the backwardness of this nation for over a century and a half.

La Second Industrial Revolution was born between the United States and Europe, so already that advantage of our continent no longer existed and in fact the world leaders of the twentieth century were the USA. Many, including Rifkin, now think that it will always be the US-Europe axis that will lead la Third Industrial Revolution.

In my view, this is not at all likely to happen. The "old world" is in the throes of dramatic problems and epochal crises, only slightly felt in countries such as China and India. We will talk about this again, but for now the concept that others could be the leaders of the future must be clear.

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Yesterday's context

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At the beginning we must understand what was the context experienced until recently and then analyze, in the course of the book, the reasons for the crisis, the necessary change and the future final landing. Many might think that this is a description of today, especially referring to the lifestyles of previous generations and translating them as they are into today's panorama. It's a fairly common mistake because inertia is elevated to the belief that the world is not what it used to be.

Yesterday's context was given by the prevailing concentrated model, the beating heart of the society resulting from the Second Industrial Revolution of the early twentieth century. A concentrated, dominant and all-encompassing model that pervaded every aspect of daily life.

The energy supply was given by fossil sources, mainly oil; transport was totally dependent on black gold and the automobile, with its necessary infrastructure, had become the preeminent symbol of the predominance of the individual over the public (the trains and the railways had given way to these new means of locomotion). In the name of oil, people were willing to wage war and accept enormous waste, using energy and the products that derive their nature from it in an inefficient way.

It was the world of cheap energy for everyone, at least for the West. The United States and Europe, the First World, dominated the world scene in terms of energy, being the first global consumers and having per capita consumption five to ten times higher than in any other part of the planet. It was the model in which 10% of the human population owned 80% of the wealth and consumption and, within rich nations, the wealthiest 10% of the population owned 80% of all financial assets. An energy concentration that turned into economic and financial concentration thanks to a few global oligopolies and a concentration of information thanks to the multinational television and media groups, which in turn supported a democratic policy within these countries but limited to the management of the consent. The State was seen as an invader of the field of the Free Market, synonymous with infinite individual freedom for which the founding value was the social and economic ascent of the individual. Finance was the keystone of this concentrated system, a generalized finance dominating every single action to seek maximum profit without ifs and buts.

The energy necessary for this model came only from some areas of the planet, in particular the Middle East, in which the establishment of dictatorial and liberticidal regimes was permitted in the name of low-cost strategic energy supplies, in exchange for copious investments in hands of the local oligarchic ruling class, except to claim the unilateral right-duty to intervene economically and militarily to safeguard, at a distance of thousands of kilometres, the standard of living of the citizens of rich countries, when there was a concrete threat of danger from some regime got out of hand.

The distribution of energy was one-way, from an oligopolistic or state monopolist manager to recipient customers who only had the possibility of consuming and not deciding. The planning of the production, distribution and use control was such as to plan in advance the construction of new plants, including energies of non-fossil origins such as nuclear or hydroelectric plants.

The user had no real power other than that of consuming and paying, since everything was decided and coordinated from above with regulations, projects and financing belonging to politics and its very close relations with the economic-financial elite.

In essence, a small handful of people and companies decided energy policy, the international geopolitical order, the economy and mass consumption, leaving individual citizens free to vote, pay for services and choose what to consume. (but often not on how and how much to consume).

The concentration of power, energy, the economy, decisions, communications was a consequence of the enormous capital necessary for mass exploitation, unthinkable for average realities that have been engulfed by this system. The conception of work was based on a fragmentation of skills and duties which reflected the pyramidal and top-down structure of the company.

In this global framework, renewable sources, energy efficiency, environmentalism, associations were seen as simple compendiums and corollaries of the existing system, completely marginal and with purposes mainly of an ethical-moral nature, as if to justify certain behaviors and used, in a certain sense, to cleanse one's conscience, in the same way as aid to poor countries. Indeed, with one hand these countries were given aid in terms of solidarity and public funds, but on the other they continued to support the undemocratic regimes in power, to supply them with weapons and to fuel social inequalities in the name of profit and, sometimes, the possibility of access to some raw materials.