Evolving Infrastructure Models: Telecom, Electricity & the IoT

16 Aug 2015

Evolving Infrastructure Models: Telecom, Electricity & the IoT

2015-08-16
Mitchell Shapiro
Blog

Though not as essential as drinking water, I consider both electricity and Internet access to be core infrastructure, with high fixed costs and providing general purpose support for the requirements of modern life. As the Internet expands to include networked “things” as well as people, and electric utilities pursue a future “smart grid,” the scope of these two sectors’ activity seem likely to overlap more than ever in the future. One example of this is the widespread deployment by utilities of so-called “smart meters” connected via the utility’s own (usually wireless) network. Though it’s unclear how this strategy will evolve […]

09 Aug 2015

Using ICT to Develop Infrastructure Systems for the “Digital Anthropocene”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the design and management of society’s core infrastructure systems (which I define broadly to include things like healthcare, education, housing and “money”) in an era marked by several important trends (for reasons suggested below, I refer to this as the “digital anthropocene”): substantial (and currently destructive) impacts of human activities on natural systems, a planetary phase referred to as the Anthropocene; continued and arguably mounting evidence that the status-quo dynamics within our dominant political and economic systems are aggravating rather than reducing inequalities in wealth and related factors; the dramatic expansion in scope, content […]

27 May 2015

The Rush to “Smart” Meters: Maybe Not So Smart?

In a recent blog post I discussed a critique of today’s “smart meters” that focused on the technology’s shortcomings as a step toward creating a “smart grid” that reduces climate change risks and other negative impacts associated with our current carbon-intensive energy systems. In another recent post I discussed the need for more research on EMF health effects. In this post I’m going to revisit the subject of smart meters from a perspective informed by both of those prior posts. One of my goals is to use smart meters as a specific example of how, when making decisions about large-scale technology […]

20 May 2015

Are “Smart Meters” a Costly Diversion From the “Smart Grid” We Really Need?

I recently read a paper entitled “Getting Smarter About the Smart Grid” by Timothy Schoechle. Though the paper’s primary focus is the electricity industry, it seems a fitting topic for the Quello Center blog because it raises important questions about how best to use information and communication technology to support a sustainable energy system that addresses the increasingly urgent issue of climate change and other environmental challenges we now face. And it does so in a way that challenges conventional wisdom regarding the massive and costly deployment of so-called “smart meters” now underway across the country. The paper’s core argument, […]

smart grid