power and utilities networks

In terms of well-being the invention of the electric kettle and toaster have probably had a greater economic and social impact than the internet. 

This page looks at electrification and power networks as a model for considering the impact of the web.

     power

Thomas Hughes' Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society 1880-1930 (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Uni Press 83) is a deeply intelligent study of perhaps the great revolution last century. 

For those trying to understand the digital rhetoric we recommend David Nye's Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology (Cambridge, MIT Press 92) and American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, MIT Press 96). 

Jonathan Coopersmith's The Electrication of Russia, 1880-1926 (Ithaca, Cornell Uni Press 92) and Ronald Tobey's Technology As Freedom: The New Deal & the Electrical Modernization of the American Home (Berkeley, Uni of California Press 96) are points of reference. 

For antecedents of the Toffler and Gilder digital delirium we recommend Leo Marx's neglected classic The Machine in the Garden: Technology & the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York, Oxford Uni Press 67), Thomas Hughes' American Genesis: A Century of Invention & Technological Enthusiasm (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Uni Press 89), William Akin's Technocracy & the American Dream (Berkeley, Uni of California Press 77) and Howard Segal's Technological Utopianism in American Culture (Chicago, Uni of Chicago Press 85).

Ian Byatt's The British Electrical Industry: The Economic Returns to a New Technology (Oxford, Clarendon Press 70) is suggestive.

Charles David Jacobson's Ties That Bind: Economic & Political Dilemmas of Urban Utility Networks, 1800-1990 (Pittsburgh, Uni of Pittsburgh Press 00) offers insightful comments about market dominance, infrastructure and regulatory mechanisms in considering cable television, gas, electricity and water systems in the US.




   next page  (railways)