It’s impossible not to laugh while watching this local San Francisco news broadcast. It tells the story of “the first step in newspapers by computer,” the delivery of copy via Compuserve to people like Richard Halloran, whose tagline, in place of say, citizen or CEO, is “Owns Home Computer.”

There’s something poignant about the last scene of the newspaper vendor who “isn’t worried about his job.”

I post this to remind myself that change happens, even if it’s pretty obvious we suck at anticipating it. But it also brings to mind the difficulty in changing energy supply. No one really wanted, “newspapers by computer,” but plenty of people love the Internet. With energy though, we’re trying to do a direct swap of an identical commodity. At the end of the day, you still want the same damn electricity to come out of the socket. Green tech isn’t going to bring you the Internet, it’s just going to allow you to keep it without the negative repercussions.