lasers, portable X Rays, shielding for nuclear reactors, compact discs, hybrid vehicle motors,

On the vertical axis, I'm going to show you how many lightbulbs what our energy consumption per person is.

So there's 40 lightbulbs' worth for transport, 40 lightbulbs' worth for heating, and 40 lightbulbs' worth for making electricity, and other things are relatively small, compared to those three big fish.

And with 200 square meters of solar power on our plane, we can produce the same energy than 200 little lightbulbs.

And I have 100 of them.

Top left, we have Canada and Australia, with enormous land areas, very high per capita consumption 200 or 300 lightbulbs per person and very low population densities.

If you leave the landscape totally alone, it would turn into something like that.

The light bulb has burned out.

A failed baseball player.

They... change their energy levels.

40 Watt incandescent lamp

100 Watt incandescent lamp

200 Watt incandescent lamp

No, your flashlight is meant to illuminate.

That's a fourfold increase over today's levels of nuclear power.

The energy consumption of the United Kingdom, the total energy consumption not just transport, but everything

This is coal, the most common source of electricity on the planet, and there's enough energy in this coal to light this bulb for more than a year.

So for example, if we're looking at light bulb eight.

For us, we're very facile around electricity.

And a fourth supply side option concentrating solar power in other people's deserts.

One is that the density of energy gathered in these technologies is dramatically less than a power plant.

How long before next rocket can be launched, somewhere.

Edison invented the light bulb.

The light is out.

So I have one light bulb there.

I'm going to number them one through 100.

But I think you get the point.

So what's our question?

Here are the cables coming up into this light fixture.

As you might guess doing so would take a huge amount computation for even the most modest scene.

You know, this type of bulbs produces a lot of heat.

Noticed a bulb was out.

Our matchmaker is like a catalyst.

Today, we deliver enough cleanburning helium3... to supply the energy needs of nearly 70 of the planet.

But we still look at technology as top down mega projects.

Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.

Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.

A little bit of differential, but not much.

The response to a bad idea

Well, let me actually just draw them.

So the first light bulb is light bulb one.

Light bulb three will be on.

The fifth light bulb would have been on and it'll stay on.

So the first pass, I switch every light bulb.

Four times four is 16.