Ars Technica published a piece I wrote on my experiment disconnecting my apartment from the grid, I disconnected from the electric grid for 8 months—in Manhattan. It goes into more depth than my TIME piece I’ve Been Living Off-Grid In Manhattan for Half-a-Year. It’s in my voice, unlike the New Yorker‘s Off the Grid in the Big City.
One of my main points was seeing the experiment like the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk. Normally when I talk about flying, I’m talking about pollution, displacing people from their land for fuel, and problems like that, but tabling the sustainability perspective, looking at it on the Wright brothers’ terms, before anyone could have imagined the problems flying would create in sustainability, tearing communities apart, emptying small towns, and separating people from their families, anyone could call their flight a failure. Their plane couldn’t carry passengers or cargo, they didn’t create a global system of airports, and they didn’t create the 747.
The point was they showed something once considered impossible, including by experts, was possible. They shifted minds so others could continue a process of continual improvement. One of my main goals is showing what’s possible. The article rose to become the second of two feature stories, generating hundreds of comments, nearly double the other, on Elon Musk. Here’s the article’s forum discussion.
Many of the comments get the point of experimenting in new areas allows you to find what’s possible and expand frontiers. Many, though, miss the point. Still, it’s not their job for me to be understood. I look forward to learning from people’s responses how to communicate subtlety and nuance on finer points.
In other words: more stories in Ars Technica to come, filling in what this story didn’t.
My top goal is for a few people to respond “You can do that?! I want to try!” and then to do it themselves. Not many have to try for a movement to start of people learning to enjoy life more and improve their communities by polluting less. I’m not talking about calling solar and wind clean, green, and renewable when they aren’t so not reducing while believing you are. I’m talking about restoring lost values of Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You (the Golden Rule), Live and Let Live (Common Decency), and Leave It Better Than You Found It (Stewardship) and living by those values, then leading others to.
I predict people will pass me like I’m standing still.
hI. tried solar heat this year, 3 months into a Canadian Winter I think the gas heat is back on, snice we just recieved a gas bill, however three e-batteries are good enough to power the big screen tv which is on 16 hours of the day and an induction burner which we use each day, three meals, there are additional batteries taking up my husband’s work bench space and I believe I would have a healthier happier home if I had a carpenter, however thank you for the experiment, how do you heat your hot water for showers, and laundry, you are lucky it is just you, I have three all the time, and 6 sometimes plus 3 Huskies, and we are home bodies, we are not currently using our solar power for the tv which is beyond me, as I like cd’s and reading, it’s an old house, was a puppet theatre, it’s big,I don’t believe in Elon Musk’s vision and think that’s why America is broke, and my country has to make economic arrangements with immigration to survive, however we have an electric car, go to Niagara falls sometimes and know the charging stations, put lots in on the way to Wasaga, Barrie and Collingwood please, I don’t have a car myself, usually stay local, am a caregiver for elderly and a housewife, and believe in my feet, remember the thing about the internet usage tower reaching too much internet usage in the news about a year and a half ago, we spent 5000 on all this, it crowds my kitchen and I still have to roast turkeys for everyone, there will always be enough food, we can all go next to naked, and mango shoes and couches are retarded, we were put on this earth with dominion over the animals of the ground, fish of the sea, and birds of the sky, I get it that we all should unplug a bit, idealism’s great, I however am a realist, signed, Syngularitea
Hi, besides your questions, the article’s comments asked a lot of questions too. I plan to write another post to answer these questions. I’ll check with my editor. I hope you don’t mind waiting, but there are so many questions, many overlapping, I think the best way to answer them is systematically.
I also don’t agree with Musk’s vision. Being solo gives me some advantages, but no economies of scale, so it makes it harder in other areas. For some reason, people always point out things that are easier for me, never acknowledging advantages they have.
I hope you don’t mind my mentioning, you describe a lifestyle that doesn’t sound sustainable — that is, it seems to require you polluting the environment, which hurts other people. Have you considered changing your lifestyle?