How Infrastructure Works: The systems that run our world - and how we fix them

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Description

Every day, we are granted the power to travel at high speeds, fly, see in the dark, summon water from distant mountains and electricity from the sun. The systems that run our world are invisible to us - until they fail. Infrastructure enables lives of astounding ease and productivity that would have been unimaginable just a century ago. It is a way for us to work collectively for the public good - and it consists of the most complex and vast technological systems ever created by humans. But these systems are not designed for a changing world. Engineer and materials scientist Deb Chachra takes readers on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, just how much we rely on them - but also whom they work well for, and who pays the costs. From Snowdonia's Electric Mountain to Telangana solar plant in India, Chachra shows how we can rebuild our shared infrastructure to be not just functional but also equitable, resilient, and sustainable. The cost of not being able to rely on these systems is unthinkably high. We need to learn how to see them - and fix them, together - before it's too late.

Reviews

The urgent problems of the modern era have instilled in so many of us a deep craving to more clearly see the systems that define our lives, to better understand when and why they fail, and to regain agency over a world that can seem too complex to understand much less affect. Fortunately, Deb Chachra has written exactly the book we needed. Revelatory, superbly written, and pulsing with wisdom and humanity, How Infrastructure Works is a masterpiece. -- Ed Yong, author of An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes
Deb Chachra provides a helpful and hopeful guide to understanding the hidden systems that keep our everyday lives going. You won't see the world the same after reading this book! -- Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist
A wonderful, wide-ranging narrative addressing the technical, social, personal, historical, and political aspects of the often-disregarded, invisible systems that support us. Forged of a huge heart and vast expertise, it shines with fierce humanity. -- Helen Macdonald, author of Vesper Flights and H Is for Hawk
Deb Chachra is the perfect guide not just to how infrastructure works but also how it feels. This book is just like the power plants it describes: a precise machine, a fountain of energy. -- Robin Sloan, author of Sourdough and Mr Penumbras 24-Hour Bookstore
How Infrastructure Works gives you x-ray vision into our built environment. It's also a ton of fun to read; Chachra is a gifted stylist and a first-rate intellectual guide. -- Clive Thompson, author of Coders
A hopeful, lyrical - even beautiful - hymn to the systems of mutual aid we embed in our material world, from sewers to roads to the power grid. * Cory Doctorow, author of Red Team Blues *

Author Bio

Deb Chachra is a professor at Olin College of Engineering with a technical background in engineering physics and materials science. She writes the newsletter Metafoundry and creates and communicates widely at the intersection of technology and society, including pieces for The Atlantic, the Guardian, the journal Nature, and the comic book Bitch Planet. Her research and ideas have been recognized and supported by awards from the Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Autodesk, and others. Chachra lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.