Powering the Dream_ The History and Promise of Green Technology - Alexis Madrigal [2]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INNUMERABLE PEOPLE CONTRIBUTED to the making of this book. Writing may seem like a solitary pursuit, but you can only do it well when a bunch of other people band together to make the space for you to do your work. Beyond all others, Sarah Rich will always have my love and thanks for the way she made space and time for me by running our lives during the long months of typing. She was the first to believe in me, the closest to me when my brain was stationed in the past, and the last reader before the printer. There are not enough letterpress thank-you cards in the world.
The University of California–Berkeley’s Office for the History of Technology gave me a workspace, both literally and figuratively. I owe much of my success in exploring new territory here to their generosity.
I also have the deepest gratitude to Wired and the Atlantic, which provided wonderful institutional support for this endeavor. Specifically, my old boss and friend Betsy Mason deserves a million high fives. She taught me much about everything and always indulged (and secretly shared) my passion for weird history. Thank you also to my new boss, Bob Cohn, for his unflagging support. He is the best manager in the magazine business, according to everyone who has ever worked with him, including me.
On the business end of things, I could not be happier with my agent David Fugate, who helped me shape a bunch of ideas into something with purpose, and Bob Pigeon, my editor and the kind of guy who always knows just what to say.
Many people deepened my thinking and challenged my assumptions, including Myra Rich, Frank Laird, Andrew Kirk, Adam Rome, Peter Shulman, Erle Ellis, Chris Mims, Andy Revkin, Gregor MacDonald, Michael Kanellos, John Pavlus, Chris Nelder, Brandon Keim, Dave Roberts, Todd Woody, Jesse Jenkins, Brian Walsh, Seth Garz, Heather Fleming, Randy Alfred, Ruth Seeley, Robin Sloan, Matthew Battles, Tim Maly, Geoff Manaugh, Nicola Twilley, Maggie Koerth-Baker, Sascha Pohflepp, Tim Carmody, Maureen Ogle, and Robert Rich.
And to those who kept me sane in darkest days, I owe you several million drinks each: my parents, Marissa Madrigal, Alex Miel, Teddy Wright, Ziggy Whitman, Jessica Battilana, Sarah Picard, Cara deFabio, Tali Horowitz, Noah Rauch, Joel Snyder, Betsy Uhrman, Julie Sherwood, Dylan Fareed, Yaron Milgrom-Elcott, Miriam Sheinbein, Mat Honan, Harper Honan, Kristin Smith, and Jon Snyder.
Though they don’t know it, the pioneers of deep thinking about energy and society—living and dead—are who kept my mind alive in writing this book. So to Stewart Brand, J. Baldwin, Palmer Putnam, Alvin Weinberg, Arnold Goldman, and many others, thank you for your foresight.
I should also thank Ritual Coffee, Coffee Bar, and that weird place by the 24th Street BART Stop in San Francisco for allowing me to take up valuable table space. Couldn’t have done it without your coffee or hospitality. And of course, I should thank Twitter, which makes the long days seem shorter.
Introduction
YOU COULD BE EXCUSED for thinking that there is no history of what we call green technology. If you’re reading Time or watching television or listening to Sarah Palin or Barack Obama, according to them, solar and wind are new, geothermal has barely been tried, and efficiency begins tomorrow. Perhaps some hippies toyed with off-grid living in the ’60s and there was some boondoggle in the Carter administration, but the hippies abandoned their communes in the woods and Carter lost to Reagan, so nothing much happened. Maybe