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The Grid
I heard the term “The Grid” in a post 9/11 world during the northeast blackout of 2003. As an immigrant, the name “blackout” was new to my lexicon after experiencing rolling blackouts in the heart of Silicon Valley during 2000–01. Back in India, we called these “power-cut.” No doubt that electricity is an essential part of our life. The question of “how essential” was answered in the rolling blackouts of 2000–01 when traffic lights stopped working. Although blackout or power-cut has happened in India, it is easy to survive as chaos added to chaos is again chaos. But when order disintegrates into chaos, survival becomes questionable and scary. The blackout of 2003 caused much anguish, and the grid entered the mainstream. What is the grid? According to Wikipedia, the grid or the electrical grid or the power grid is an interconnected network for delivering electricity. In the book titled “The Grid,” Gretchen Bakke, a cultural anthropologist, trace the grid’s story — past, present, and future.
Although the book is a set of chapters, the reader can divide it into four distinct parts for easier understanding.
- Part 1: The grid forms to take shape with a little experiment conducted by Father Joseph Neri in 1871. Edison’s invention of the parallel circuit further enhanced the possibility of a grid. With parallel circuits, it was possible to have an uninterrupted supply of electricity. The invention of…
