How much do you depend of electricity to function properly and survive in this world?
I am very clear that the majority over here, if not all, never had to live in a world in which electricity was rather a scarce and almost luxury good. And therefore they don't know and do not have the remotest idea of what it is to live in a world where with the push of a button or at the flick of a switch they can please the smallest of their whims. Since everyone is wrongly "plugged in" to the idea that this has always been, is and will be like this forever.
These youngsters take all these advantages for granted.
Because as long as public services work correctly, it will never occur to these young people to think about everything that is behind these services to make them work correctly for their well-being. For them everything happens as if it's by magic.
Let's explore!
Yeah, no one really stops to think seriously about what is behind the correct functioning of these public services while everything they may want is within the reach of just flick a switch. Or press a button or whatever. Why would they do it? Right?
Unless... unless something unexpected happened and for this let's give an example. A simple example of regular public services that I suppose even today's young people around the world may have experienced at some point in their lives when they fail.
Let's talk about the public service of urban sanitation, cleaning, collection, management, disposal and treatment of organic and inorganic waste in cities and towns. Have you ever seen what happens when these stop working properly on a regular basis?
Yeah, of course, no one really realizes everything that lies behind the proper functioning of this daily public service until the moment that their waste begins to accumulate in mountains everywhere, invading streets, sidewalks and highways and the pestilence, bad odors, flies, cockroaches, rats and mice and all kinds of pests begin to impact them directly in some way or other. ¿Am I right?
Okay, that was just a simple example. Let's get into the matter now.
«ELECTRICITY»
Have you noticed how lately and in very few years the demand and consumption of electricity around the world has increased exponentially and has uncontrollably overwhelmed the supply capacity of the public grid to the point of causing it to collapse in some countries and in others already on the verge of collapsing in the very short term?
And all this thanks to technology? To the advances in technology to guarantee the well-being to which you have become accustomed these days. Technological advances such as electric vehicles, connected, intelligent and managed by some sort of artificial intelligence from some data center abroad?
Since, for example, in countries like Norway, they have already reached a rate of 82% of sales of zero kilometer electric cars over the total market and many others, such as the Netherlands, are already beginning to suffer the collapse of their public electrical grid due to the high demand for energy from its plug-in automotive fleet.
Given that Stedin, the largest electricity distributor in the Netherlands, has already issued a warning, saying that the situation is unsustainable. The city of Utrecht already has greater demand for electricity than the capacity of the general grid and similar situations could arise in a very short time in Rotterdam, Amsterdam and The Hague.
By the way, do you have at least an idea of what is the electricity consumption of those huge data centers like those of the technological giants like Amazon, Apple, Google, Alphabet, Palantir, Meta, Netflix or Microsoft just to name a few of the best known?
Or that of the demand and high electrical consumption of the newest modern technologies such as the recent developments and advances in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Quantum Computing, IoT, Big Data, Deep Learning, Cryptomining and many other similar technological developments in these matters? Do you have an idea of what its electrical consumption might be? ¿Yes? ¿No? Okay, then...
Let's explore!
On this topic obviously we would have many more things to talk about, much more to point out and much more to highlight. However and for the purposes of this not-so-ambitious post, let's just ask again one more time: ¿How much do you depend of electricity to function properly and survive in this world? ¿Huh?
Yeehaw! This post sure hits home the importance of appreciating the things we often take for granted like electricity and public services. Keep spreading that awareness, partner!
We live off-grid and produce all of our own electricity...Bugger all use if we're hit with a solar flare I know, but otherwise, we should be grand.