PABLO & MINDY:
FREE RADICALS CAUGHT IN THE GRID
The biological cell network allows for high adaptability
to facilitate growth and other functions to serve the whole.
Grids vary widely, because each is an adaptation
I don’t know why, but for some reason nature, including human nature, organizes itself using what we loosely call a grid. The reason is that survival depends on being efficient. I think this requires a grid-like organization that has multiple iterations of a function. Grids synchronize to perform a singular purpose–unless, as in my novel, free radicals catch themselves in the grid and determine to disrupt it.
Grids vary widely, because each is an adaptation to an environment and a unique set of conditions.
For that particular setup they are the right solution. They are as good, efficient, and productive as they can be to survive at their stage of evolution. (But they are not perfect; read on for more about that.) Take cellular organizations as an example. They operate as interconnected cells, each functioning semi-autonomously while at the same time keeping connections to other cells. The biological cell network allows for high adaptability to facilitate growth and other functions to serve the whole. And this grid of life is vastly successful. A study published in Science Advances estimated that there are about 435,000 unique land plant species. And then there the species of animals, fish, fungi, and bacteria.
On the other extreme, the open-source grid:
This cellular organizational structure is completely different when it comes to the structure of human interaction. Open-source software development communities follow a mesh structure where developers freely collaborate across multiple projects and teams. As in a mesh, multiple redundant connections strengthen the solution. However, like cellular structures, open-source mesh organizations are also successful and their structure has given us platforms like Meta, computer operating systems like Linux and Apache, browsers like Firefox, coding languages such as Python, collaboration software like Github, and mostly recently, the AI search engine, Deepseek.
Grids created by humans are prone to human nature and are therefore not perfect.
“The Grid” is an umbrella term accepted by the public due to the need to shorten “The Electrical Distribution System” or “The Power Grid” on which we all rely. There are multiple organizational system options, from the matrix to the web to the cellular grids, to star, cluster, woven, mesh, lattice, basket, and honeycomb. The structure of a simple grid endured from its inception during the industrial revolution and was passed on to the US power utilities.
The power grid’s inconvenient problem is its lack of standards
They don’t corrode and decay in the same way, but they do decay from corruption and destructive political policy. Compounding this, the power grid’s inconvenient problem is its lack of standards; its conflicting performance metrics; its challenge of keeping up with the “moving target” of technology and scope issues; its undefined inter-state dependencies; its incompatible infrastructures; and its renewable energy integration issues.
Power hungry data centers
This morass of uncoordinated progress must now also cope with AI data centers that gobble up all excess power, or create their own, which creates more interdependency issues. The AI engines compete, jealously protecting their networks and information sourced from everywhere—even space. And let’s not forget that climate change is wreaking havoc on power grid infrastructure. Remember the California fires from downed transmission lines? Even the infrastructure of roads must change to transport massive wind turbine blades.
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And our survival relies on this mess.
To be fair, in the US there are hard-working federal agencies trying to guide the rat-race for power:
- FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission): Regulates interstate electricity transmission
- NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation): Overseen by FERC: It develops and enforces reliability standards, coordinates between regional entities and manages interconnection agreements.
- DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY: Contributes through research funding for grid modernization, has a national laboratory for AI development, writes cybersecurity guidelines, and invests in infrastructure.
Despite the responsibilities these agencies have, they have very limited authority over the decisions of the states and utilities.
We can look forward a future of power outages, of being locked out of the gridlock. We’ve seen this movie before. It’s called “Koyanisquatsi” and the Hopi word means life out of balance.
Pablo and Mindy are ignorant of the many causes for power failures. All they want to know is: what is the end-user to do when his and her life depends on electric power, on communication with life-support services? Sure, the generator will kick in, the battery will take over, but after a while the gas runs out, and the batteries die.
These questions plague Pablo, now a successful twenty-two-year-old industrial designer. What he doesn’t know is that cells in cellular grids act on their own, but still maintain their duties, interacting with the whole community. Can he finesse this semi-autonomous lifestyle?
Pablo must decide if he is an antioxidant for the grid or if he is just a loose molecule, radical and free.
Is he so motivated to slow climate change that he is unstable, and a highly reactive molecule in the cellular network of his community? Does his radical freedom make him capable of damaging those he is connected to, or is he an antioxidant that lends his talent to the problem?
They say we grow wiser as we grow old, but sometimes a young visionary comes along with new-fangled and strange ideas and they’re not worth a dime. But if the detail is channeled and viewed like the pennies in the dime, sometimes they can transform our world for the better. And that’s worth a trillions.
