Economic and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin speaks to crowd at Moss Arts Center

[00:00:02] >> I think that there's a tremendous opportunity in every region of the world to begin looking at scaling up a completely new infrastructure for a third industrial revolution. Places like Blacksburg are perfect because Virginia Tech is a world class university. Roanoke is a great town. This should be a model in Virginia on how to transform the state's economy into a 21st century infrastructure that's smart, that provides lots and lots of new jobs to build out and it provides new efficiency and productivity for your populations and creates a framework fitting for a digital native generation. [00:00:34] It's designed and engineered to be distributed it works best if it's transparent and open rather than closed. The more open it is, the more network effect you get, everyone benefits. [INAUDIBLE]. What we've seen in the E.U. is that each region has to build out and scale up its own third industrial revolution infrastructure. [00:00:56] The actual architecture is similar, the same everywhere but then you customize it to your own goals your own business opportunities your own labor needs your own community desires and then they connect up like Wi-Fi. We need a region that will be a lighthouse region for Virginia and for the rest of the surrounding states and I suspect this might be a very good place to be because you got huge assets here. [00:01:17] Number one is Virginia Tech, which is one of the great universities