Conservation and efficiency, ascendant in the 1960s and ’70s, were the precursors of a valuation of what wasn’t used and not needed. And the debate that rages today over how one might accurately count a watt saved, or value and remunerate a power plant not built, also began back in the days of President Carter and his Cardigan Path. In the age of wireless communication systems, we can add another vision: How might we make a grid less material rather than more so? Across domains one begins to see an abiding concern for ways of reducing the material impacts of infrastructure and counting every
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