The electrical grid is an accident of history and of culture. It was not, and is not, essential to the easy use of domesticated electricity. And yet that's the system the United States chose to build, a system now so rickety and near collapse, a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt.
In entertaining, perceptive, deeply researched fashion, cultural anthropologist Gretchen Bakke uses the history of an increasingly outdated electrical infrastructure to show how the United States has gone from seemingly infinite technological prowess to a land of structural instability. And the consequences are significant. Our electrical grid was planned--if it was planned at all--during an era when standardization meant strength. This was the backbone of our industrial economy. Yet as we've increasingly become a nation that caters to local needs, our massive systems are threatening to fail us. Perhaps none is so obviously as the power grid.
With an eye to the future, Bakke doesn't perscribe a solution, but she does show a variety of ways ahead that are being developed for use in the coming decades.
