TORONTO DIGITAL CITY LABS SPEAKER SERIES: Gary Genosko, Lakehead University

Hacking the Grid: Does Electricity Want to Be Free?

Gary Genosko, Lakehead University

Abstract

Free web content idealists believe that information wants to be free. My strategy in this presentation is to ask: does electricity want to be free? If so, on whose terms, and by what means? I want to look for preliminary answers to my questions in countercultural struggles against the electrical companies, namely, in Yippie technoculture, practices of rogue electricians in the cannabis culture of grow-ops, eco-warriors cutting down hydro towers, and alt-energy, off-the-grid, drop outs. In order to imagine what an electrical commons might look like, I regain some hard lessons from the history of black outs, especially large-scale events in the northeast such as New York City (1965) and Toronto (2003).

Biography

Gary Genosko is Canada Research Chair, Tier II in Technoculture Studies at Lakehead University. Genosko’s current projects include Modelling Communication from Telegraphy to the Internet, Canadian Telos: Institutionalization of Critical and Postmodern Theory and Tense Surveillance: Case Studies of Informatic Subjugation.