{"id":959,"date":"2008-10-13T04:38:52","date_gmt":"2008-10-13T11:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=959"},"modified":"2008-10-13T04:38:52","modified_gmt":"2008-10-13T11:38:52","slug":"technology-traps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=959","title":{"rendered":"Technology traps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href='http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/technology-traps-10-13.jpg' title='technology-traps-10-13.jpg'><img src='http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/technology-traps-10-13.jpg' alt='technology-traps-10-13.jpg' \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em>James Burke with a relay like the one that caused the Northeast Blackout of 1965<\/em><\/p>\n<p>We all live in a technology trap.<\/p>\n<p>One of the best documentaries I&#8217;ve ever seen, back in the 1980s, was <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/James_Burke_(science_historian)\">James Burke<\/a>&#8216;s Connections series. In one part of this series, he takes as his case study the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Northeast_Blackout_of_1965\">Northeast Blackout of 1965<\/a> to show how we all live in a technology trap and how we&#8217;re all in denial about it. I&#8217;ve often thought about, and made reference to, this series over the years. I recently discovered that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pTbCNycm0nQ&#038;feature=PlayList&#038;p=422338074061C0E0&#038;index=0&#038;playnext=1\">you can watch it on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As you watch this documentary, keep in mind that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/08\/27\/business\/27grid.html\">power grid today<\/a> remains old and balkanized. And the power grid is just one of the technology traps that we depend on every day.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone is nervous these days about the state of the economy. Obviously there&#8217;s not much we can do. But it&#8217;s good for one&#8217;s mental health to do <em>something<\/em>. One thing we can do is take a little time to look around us at our technology traps and think about where we can easily and cheaply provide ourselves some backup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Burke with a relay like the one that caused the Northeast Blackout of 1965 We all live in a technology trap. One of the best documentaries I&#8217;ve ever seen, back in the 1980s, was James Burke&#8216;s Connections series. In one part of this series, he takes as his case study the Northeast Blackout of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=959\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Technology traps&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sustainable-living","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}