The energy grid is one of the most complex machines you interact with every day. Surely, it’s the largest. It might even exceed smartphones and computers in number of components and interdependent mechanisms. But, even more than smartphones and computers, we’ve come to take it for grated. You flip a switch, and your lights turn on. Yet, it’s so mind boggling that there is electricity instantly available to you, and millions of other people, and millions of devices and appliances, whenever you need it. Just the physics are hard to fathom, much less the cooperation of private and public organizations.
And despite its ubiquity, or maybe because of its complexity, the grid is extremely fragile. Reading The Grid made me wonder how we don’t have constant rolling blackouts.
Would recommend a read, if only to be a little more grateful for your wall plugs.