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Societies of Cooperating Cognitive Solutions
by Bruce Sterling
Jock Gill at Greater Democracy suggests that the power grid could be a decentralized, distributed system, like the Internet. [Link]
But let's take internet architecture further and apply it to our electrical power system. This yields an "Intergrid" - every building powering itself as its demands require rather than every 'demand' depending on a centralized power station with a many decades replacement cycle. Just as centralized communications stifles innovation so does centralized power generation.

We need a local grid for mutual security. That is, I and my neighbors need redundancy and back up in case our individual power system conks out. We will therefore connect our "homes" to one another in a mutual assistance grid. Logically it would make sense to then interconnect these edge grids for further security. Thus you organically build from the edges: the new InterGrid starts at the edges and builds in every direction, unlike the old central grid which starts at the center and builds towards the edge.


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