The end of analog infrastructure

ogy has not only changed the way music is made and heard, it has transformed much of society and continues to infiltrate everything from driving to grocery shopping.

The digitization of the modern world is now changing our infrastructure. In most of Africa and south Asia, there were no phones until cell phones came along because the cost to install and maintain land lines was prohibitive. Cell service allowed a handful of towers and cheap cell phones to directly connect people at a fraction of the cost.

In North America and Europe, major telecommunications companies are trying to adapt to a world where phone and cable lines are increasingly irrelevant, where more and more households are ditching their land lines in favour of their smartphones and dropping live TV in favour of streaming services.

Those aren’t the only lines entering modern buildings that are becoming increasingly unnecessary. Gas and electricity connections are a 20th century approach to lighting and heating our homes and workplaces.

This is where the development of a major hydroelectric dam like Site C seems backwards. Digital technology has not only provided cheap and easy access to music recording devices that anyone can use anywhere, instead of just in expensive recording studios, it is increasingly removing the need for centralized power sources, such as coal plants, huge dams and nuclear power stations, with their multi-billion dollar price tags to build and operate.

Energy production is becoming increasingly small, cheap and accessible at the individual and home level.

Depending on the geography, solar, wind, run-of-river hydro and geothermal power are becoming increasingly affordable ways to heat, cool and light homes, to even providing fuel to the electric vehicles in the driveway.

In that world, not only is there no need for central power sources, there’s no need for the infrastructure to deliver that energy.

Imagine a city where neighbourhood power outages were impossible because there was no grid connecting the houses and the buildings because each structure produces its own energy.

With no power stations, pipelines and electrical grids, a major safety and security risk evaporates. Say goodbye to power bills and prices individual consumers are unable to control.

Power would become so easily accessible – as communication and information already has – that more and more consumers would unplug from the centralized energy delivery systems in favour of smart homes and buildings that manufacture and store their own energy.

Like driverless cars, this is already happening but on a small scale in test markets.

Is it really so hard to imagine Google or Apple getting into the construction business?

The analysis about whether building Site C is necessary has largely looked at overall energy consumption, delivered the way it always has, but a transformation into how energy is created could allow for the same or even more consumption without needing a project like Site C or the power lines running from it.

In that light, Site C is analog technology in a world in the process of switching over to digital.

When Brothers In Arms came out, Mushroom Studios and Little Mountain Studios in Vancouver, along with Le Studio in Morin Heights, Que., were the top analog recording outlets in Canada and big international stars came to record there.

Not one of them exists today and Le Studio, abandoned and neglected, burned to the ground earlier this year.

Their demise was unimaginable 30 years ago.

If decentralized energy quickly becomes as commonplace as technology could permit, Site C would be irrelevant and unnecessary. Talk about money for nothing.

— Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout