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Comment by knz | Hacker News Reader

"Honorable mention: The Grid, by Gretchen Bakke. This book, about our aging electrical grid, fits in one of my favorite genres: “Books About Mundane Stuff That Are Actually Fascinating.” "

The author of this book was on NPR/Fresh Air in August. It was a great listen/read if you are interested in the subject.

http://www.npr.org/2016/08/22/490932307/aging-and-unstable-t...

I heard it a couple of days after a weather related power cut and ended up in the rabbit hole of the risk from cyber warfare/terrorism and solar flares. I'm not sure I would recommend that rabbit hole if you have any concerns about the reliance of society on technology and just in time shipping!

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The very next sentence was:

> I find this topic fascinating is because my first job, in high school, was writing software for the entity that controls the power grid in the Northwest

I wonder if somewhere in bowels of a northwest utility company there is a machine silently chugging away, running code written by a teenage Bill Gates, helping deliver electricity to the masses.

Possibly! https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/10/bill-gates-first-r...

> My first job—other than being a page in Congress, which isn’t a real job—was doing a computer-software project for Bonneville Power Administration, which is a quasi-governmental entity that controls the power grid in the Northwest. We were computerizing the power grid. And the company that BPA had contracted with, TRW, was behind, so the people there scoured the country to see who really knew how to do a certain type of programming, and they found me, because I was sort of infamous as a boy wonder of a certain type of programming.

I've meet plenty of engineers at BPA. They do everything from generation, transmission, distribution, SCADA, AGC, and monitoring Hydro dams alongside the army corps. I'm really curious what he was doing, but I'm guessing he did a little bit in a very narrow section. I flipped through this book recently and wasn't very impressed to be honest.

I wonder which type of programming he's referring to!

This surprised me. Microsoft was started in the mid-70s. I'm in my early 30s and wasn't aware software was getting used in business much until the late 70s/early 80s.

I guess there were mainframes and not minicomputers? Still, surprising a high school kid would get a coding job in the early 70s.

>I'm in my early 30s and wasn't aware software was getting used in business much until the late 70s/early 80s.

Of course it was. E.g.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/360_and_successors

Bill Gates went to an affluent high school that was one of a handful to have a computer students could use, as well as a computer club, this was in the late 60s I believe.

In Paul Allen's (auto?)biography he mentions that it was a group of mothers from the school that paid for the computer (or maybe the teletype terminal). I might be getting details mixed up, it's been a while since I've read his book.

As I remember it it was a teletype. In the same autobio, somewhat later, Allen and Gates got to learn from Steve Russell (of Spacewar) at his local company which I think might've had its own DEC mini. It's been a long time for me too since I read it.

This explanation is also given in Outliers by Malcom Gladwell.

Maybe that's where I read it. I've been reading a bunch as of late so I might be getting them mixed up.

The opportunities for business use of computers was realised pretty early on - the first dedicated business computer was created in 1951:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer)

It was probably walled in during a remodel and forgotten about....

I think the word "mundane" is out of place.

Whoever isn't fascinated by the modern power grid is slightly dead inside. The same applies to a ton of other "mundane" things, like road and rail networks, sewage systems, garbage disposal and recycling, and so on.

I think a better term would be "rarely noticed".

>Whoever isn't fascinated by the modern power grid is slightly dead inside. The same applies to a ton of other "mundane" things, like road and rail networks, sewage systems, garbage disposal and recycling, and so on.

I feel like the vast majority of people have absolutely no interest in learning about these things, even in a calamitous context.

> I feel like the vast majority of people have absolutely no interest in learning about these things

True, but shows like How It's Made are incredibly popular, even if they give a very very surface view of the details.

Definitely, but how does that relate to the power grid being a mundane system?

Are you saying that we're supposed to take the word of the majority when deciding if something is "mundane"? In that case, almost everything we're discussing and upvoting here on HN is "mundane", because <90% (just a guess) of humans actually give a shit.

how unfortunate for them

I agree, but I down voted the comment for now because it doesn't really contribute anything to the conversation and doesn't seem like it means to.

> I think the word "mundane" is out of place.

I think it's perfectly fine. "Mundane" means "commonplace", "everyday"; it's an antonym of "exotic".

Some people use it in a slightly derogatory fashion because, unlike you, they don't appreciate the complexity and ingenuity of many mundane things. Which is a shame, but I think sadly inevitable, as many (most?) are designed to be unobtrusive; the only time you should notice a sewage system, say, is when it goes wrong.

Aren't we all slightly dead inside, then? I'm sure there are things you take no interest in, until it's pointed out to you.

Agreed: nobody is interested in everything. If someone was talking about the 19th century Slovakian art movement, I'd probably zone out.

But there are some complex systems that form the basis of civilization that just cannot be simply dismissed as "mundane", at least in my opinion. Systems that, without their presence and correct end-to-end operation, would result in absolute collapse of civilization. Systems that have been developed and perfected through the work of countless scientists, engineers, and laborers over the span of decades.

The power grid falls into this category, while the aforementioned 19th century movement does not.

Of course, I'm probably not aware of all such systems, and I'd definitely be delighted when someone points one out. Heck, I only learned about the complexity of HDTV standards throughout history on a HN thread today! It does not fall under the category I noted above, but I still found it deeply interesting.

I am interested in everything - even 19th century Slovakian art movements.

I love talking to people who are interested in anything other than themselves - it really doesn't matter what as long as they are interested in something enough to have learnt and thought about the topic in some depth.

The real shame is so few people are interested in anything at all.

Honestly, that's an awesome attitude to have, as people nowadays have a much shorter attention span (myself included!).

And yes, I agree: it's getting harder and harder to hold a deep conversation with someone on a technical topic, even in a professional setting. Or perhaps I'm just not looking correctly?

It is really hard to get people to open up about their interests. People with interests are so used to being shut down by other people "yeah that is interesting now let's talk more about me" that you need to slowly coax them out. The best way is to listen intently and ask probing questions to draw them out. Once they feel safe you will have some amazing conversations.

Just watch out for the bores that will just parrot whatever they heard on FOX/CNN last night.

The phase I like to remind myself is: "Be interested, not interesting."

Obviously, trying promoting such an idea to a culture that worships the selfie is foolish at best.

We can at least try :)

I am the same way. Sometimes, when I hear someone get excited/interested about something I know a lot about, I try and shut up and just listen to them talk about it. It is really a great experience.

Would you put wheel design/construction in the "mundane" category? That has similar characteristics, I think, except for the scale and coordination required.

I think I disagree that those characteristics necessitate interest. People can consider the fact that the electric grid is an awesome accomplishment, while also having no care for understanding its history or inner workings.

I'd probably go for automobile manufacturing instead, since (modern) wheel design is a subset of that; i.e., without vehicles, we wouldn't really need advanced tire technology.

That's true. I just feel that a better term could be used, since "mundane" makes it seem like the thing you're talking about is "no big deal". It just feels wrong to use it on something like the power grid.

> The same applies to a ton of other "mundane" things, like road and rail networks, sewage systems,

One of my still-on-the-shelf projects is to photograph, geo-locate and categorize all the manholes from my city that have been installed prior to WW2 in order to document how the city evolved over time (surprisingly enough my city still has manholes from the early 1900s), because a city with no working sewage system cannot be called a "city".

I live in Kyiv, Ukraine. I know a guy here who's hobby is exploring the old underground tunnels – sewage, overflow channels, catacombs. He's making a map of these because there's currently no official complete map. He often finds places there in a very alarming state – like, about to collapse and create a huge hole in the ground – and reports this to muni service so they can fix it and prevent a disaster.

Check with the city first - in the US they often have a management program due to the need to inspect manholes. Depending upon how advanced they are they may even have georeferenced photos and age information.

That's only because those with contempt for the mundane hold sway on the connotation of the word, essentially "of the world", and therefore quite rightly more fascinating than any of the airy fairy arty farty nonsense favoured by those higher ups.

Here's one that may fit into your list of must read books.

Twinkie, Deconstructed by Steve Ettlinger. This book is about the ingredients that go into a Twinkie and how they are created. Super informative on the ingredients of everyday foods.

Coming from the other end, is Christien Meindertsm's PIG 05049

    Christien Meindertsma has spent three years researching all the
    products made from a single pig. Amongst some of the more 
    unexpected results were: Ammunition, medicine, photo paper, 
    heart valves, brakes, chewing gum, porcelain, cosmetics, cigarettes, 
    conditioner and even bio diesel.

http://www.christienmeindertsma.com/index.php?/books/pig-050...

And money:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/11/30/bank-england-...

just picked this up based on your recommendation. Thanks!

Does anybody know a better book about the subject (covering the history of the development of the grid, but also being technically correct)?

According to the Amazon customers, the mentioned book was written by a non-technical person (actually, I've checked, a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology) and was apparently also without the careful editor. Alternatively, if somebody has read this book, maybe he can say that it's not that bad? I wouldn't like to buy it just to discover it's written like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13103538

> I think you would also come to see why modernizing the grid is so complex and so critical for building our clean-energy future.

I strongly suspect the grid will be severely diminished by distributed renewable energy.

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