Distributed Generation: Technology, Politics, Law

-- By DevinMcDougall - 17 Oct 2011

Conceptual Tools

This essay addresses the following question: How can the things we have learned so far in this course be applied to have useful ideas about dealing with climate change?

One useful conceptual tool introduced at the start of course is the triad of law, technology and politics, accompanied by the suggestion that these three elements affect each other and are affected by each other in complex ways that vary over time. Parsing the distinction between law and politics is difficult, and some doubt meaningful distinction can be sustained. For the purposes of this essay, I will treat law as a sociological structure that provides constraints and opportunities, analogous to how technological structures provide constraints and opportunities. I will treat politics as the exercise of agency acting within and reshaping these structures.

Law in the Internet Polity?

What are the conceptual tools provided so far in LNS, and what can we build with them?

society level: the opportunities are in distributed, decentralized collaboration. less on centralized, washington d.c. based politics as often implicit in 60s narratives

this is due to law, tech and politics law: federal courts, esp DC Circuit and SC less interested in progressive work politics: tech: we have new tools that enable new kinds of pathways to route around these issues

Consilience: overlapping layers

Marshal Ganz: campaign - online materials.

Applications

Subsection A

Problem: Climate change driver: energy use solution: sustainable energy

campaign idea: distributed photovoltaic in NYC

why NY? I live here. demonstration effect: nyc is watched in many places.

law: building codes zoning landmarking

politics: NIMBY bureaucracy status quo inertia PlaNYC?

tech: 1. human communication: organizing to share info, create shared identity 2. machine communication: smart grid. things talking to each other.

Subsub 1

Subsection B

Subsub 1

Subsub 2

Section II

Subsection A

Subsection B

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