ATDTDA (1): De Forest and Kimura (29:32-3)

[Monte Davis]

rich:
 
> Pynchon could be using the Vibe-Tesla scenario in AtD as a way of
highlighting  
> or directing his ire at the Enron type folks ...
 
Could be, but even without that he's got his teeth in one of the big
conundrums of the Gilded Age/ Progressive era (and ever since): how to
deploy technologies that tend to  "natural monopolies," i.e. combine
economies of scale and economies of networking (railroad,
telephone/telegraph, electric utilities). For Tesla/ Edison, substitute
Alexander Graham Bell (kindly Don Ameche, working to help the deaf) and his
partner Thedore Vail, who muscled a thousand local telephone start-ups into
the AT&T of 1920-1980.
 
Could we have had an "anarchist miracle" in which those technologies reached
standardization and grew just as fast, declined in real cost just as much,
but instead of MegaCorps were continent-wide alliances of warm and fuzzy
co-ops? Beats me.
 
Or at another angle, note the book's reference to the "interurbans." There
was a wonderfully efficient,. proliferating network of light rail and local
trolleys in much of the suburban and exurban US c. 1910. <cue Randy Newman,
'Dayton, Ohio, 1903'> All good liberals know how the LA trolleys were
throttled by Detroit bus (and car) interests -- but the sad fact is that 98%
of what killed that network was the preference of all our [great]
grandparents for their Very Own Flivver in their Very Own Driveway, and all
that implied. We have met the enemy and he is us.
 
If you keep the distance small enough and the power low enough, broadcast
power certainly works: my electric toothbrush recharges on its base with no
metal-to-metal contact, and just recently someone announced a scheme where
small office computer gear will get trickle power (not just relayed signals
a la WiFi or Bluetooth) from little stations on the ceiling. But for much
more than that, the basic problem remains: say my Bucks County Tesla Co-Op
power plant is just a mile away, and here I am wanting 500 watts within 1
cubic foot to microwave this broccoli. Given the nature of electromagnetic
fields, that means 2000 watts passing through a cubic foot halfway
between... and in fact through *every* cubic foot in a big half-mile
hemisphere around the plant.  
 
(Can you, instead of broadcasting, *beam* the power from source to point of
use without fighting the inverse-square relationship of distance? Sure: it's
called a laser or maser -- but something tells me anybody in the line
between the plant and my kitchen would probably get all cranky about that,
too.)
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