Our wants are too deep for the needs

Posted by T-Steel in American Society on 09 13th, 2005 | no responses


Professor Lynne Kiesling points out a glaring flaw in the electric utility industry (regarding the human error in yesterday’s Los Angeles blackout):

The more we can automate routine maintenance functions and automate the process of finding faults on a line, the less margin there is for human error to cause such dislocation and disruption. However, the electric utiilty industry is one of the most backward in the application of communication technology to perform these functions. We should ask why the regulated utility (or, in this case, the municipal utility) has so little incentive to implement modern technologies that have become so pervasive in so many other industries.

The electric utility industry is backwards! Unsettling but not surprising, dear readers. This is becoming a common theme in our great nation: reacting by disaster and not fixing the problem enough. Our utilities should have cutting edge troubleshooting, fault isolation, and diagnostic sysems. I mean, it’s only our electricity, water, natural gas, and sewer we’re talking about; the four that binds us all. Go ahead, subtract one or more and see how the quality of life in our country takes a nosedive like a kamikaze.

It just seems like we humans have this disconnect between the really important need and the all-consuming want. And we Americans have the all-consuming want down to a precise science. But then we lose our minds and/or look dumbfounded when the really important need renders the all-consuming want obsolete. Roll this through your brain:

What’s more of a pressing issue: abortion or electric utility industry problems?

I bet if you google both you’ll find that abortion has been and continues to be argued over, analyzed, debated, and perused over much, much more than the problems with the electric utility industry. Yet put us in the dark for six months and watch what happens to you, me, and every other American. A woman getting an abortion won’t matter squat in the dark.

[zing! to Lynne Kiesling]




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