New understanding of matter, energy, networks and people
Deb Chachra is a professor of engineering at Olin College. She works at the intersection of technology and society, with an emphasis on systems, education, design, and materials. She was one of the founding faculty at Olin. Today she is on leave and working towards a new mission she talks about in our podcast.
In 2023, her book How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World was published. It was recognized by Publishers Weekly as a ‘Best Book of 2023’.
As Deb explains on her website, “our infrastructural networks – water and sewage, electricity, communications, transportation, and more – shape our lives, often in ways we don’t even think about. This is a book about learning to see what they have in common, why they work the way they do, and how they can be better, for everyone.” This book will give you a perspective on infrastructure you will not forget.
Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic, Time, the Guardian, and Nature. She appeared on Vox’s “FuturePerfect 2024” list of activists and thinkers working to build a more positive future.
With her colleagues at Olin, she believes in transforming education by creating student-centered learning experiences. She teaches foundational, hands-on, design-focused courses that help young technologists think in new ways about the world. She also works with educators in different domains to incorporate these ideas and approaches for their own students.
Shorts
Infrastructure and Our Collective Future (audio podcast)
Transcript for the Podcast
Why did Deb Write About Infrastructure?
What Ethical Dilemmas Are At the Heart of Infrastructure?
The Future of Infrastructure Should Be a Collective Social Project
We Can Now Decentralize Energy Generation
Anthropogenic Climate Change and Resilience
How Can You Make People See It As Practical and Doable?
Renewables and Energy Independence
We Have Not Been Good in The Past About Harnessing Energy
Would it make a difference in climate change?
In the Past We Said “Turn The Heat Down and Wear a Sweater”
Ursula Franklin and the Real World of Technology
Unanticipation and Getting Away From False Certainties
Is the Legal Profession the Missing Player?
Importance Of Being in Association with Other Humans
Your Advice for the Next Generation?
We Should Not Wait for a New Technology
New Path of Understanding Relationship Between Energy and Matter
Imagination and Our Collective Future in a World of Limited Materials
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Links to explore
How we transform to a fully decarbonized world
by Deb in MIT Technology Review
Deb on the Wikipedia
Deb’s Website
PenguinRandomHouse
A new way of seeing the essential systems hidden inside our walls, under our streets, and all around us. It is the physical manifestation of our social contract—of our ability to work collectively for the public good—and it consists of the most complex and vast technological systems ever created by humans.
TED Talk: The Invisible Network Shaping Your Everyday Life
Cory Doctorow on Deb’s “How Infrastructure Works”
Engineering professor and materials scientist Deb Chachra’s new book is a hopeful, lyrical — even beautiful — hymn to the systems of mutual aid we embed in our material world, from sewers to roads to the power grid. It’s a book that will make you see the world in a different way — forever.
A passionate argument for the necessity of functioning infrastructure
In the Washington Post. Good infrastructure is built for resilience, not optimization
