Blackout: Marc Elsberg at TEDxBerlin

I imagine a nice dinner with friends at home suddenly lights go out the radio falls silent first you're surprised ah Oh what's happening but you're sure you know power will be back on in a few seconds or minutes you've had some glasses of wine so you use the opportunity to visit the restroom and after flushing miss the familiar sound of water refilling the tank now you're pissed and want some news unfortunately TV Internet and telephone lines and mobile networks are down almost entirely you start searching for flashlights or candles and for a battery-powered radio hands up who would have one at home and it's average like 10% or so but you're still not worried because you know power will be back on you turn the dinner in a nice candlelit dinner and are optimistic because you have been camping some summers so you know how to cope without modern lives comforts for a few hours and when you wake up next morning everything will be okay anyway but when you do wake up the next morning electricity is still a gun now you get nervous first thing you want to do is get some food and water from the supermarket but as it turns out it's closed what's happened never before in the history of mankind so many people have lived so comfortably healthily and secure as today but his life comes at a price never before has a billion of people relied so heavily on the smooth functioning of highly developed and precisely coordinated technologies as in today's developed societies every part of modern society mutually depends on many other parts in extent never seen before within one generation the rise of information technology has fundamentally changed the way we organize our society unnoticed by the most of us this was the problem when I started working on my book about the subject a couple of years ago how do you depict these hidden structures which come so natural just that we do not even spare a thought on them a classical storytelling approach is to show what happens when the system's stop working so the outcome was the thrill of like out tomorrow it will be too late which tells the story of a large black out covering Europe and in in the North America for several weeks if you think this can't happen let me just remind you of a few blackouts in the past in 2003 a single tree falling on a power line in Switzerland caused the then poorly organized Italian power grid to collapse plunging the country into a 24-hour blackout one signatory on one line in Switzerland in 2006 the passage of the cruise line in northern Germany from its inland dock yard to the sea crossing a power line led to an hour-long blackout through half of Europe from Germany to Spain with the growing complexity of the power grids to an smart grid larger events are more likely to occur so let's have a look at today's structures and systems to get an idea what tomorrow's might look like as an example I'll use the milk production delivering and selling process so maybe we start again at the closed supermarket and start at the beginning of this modern food chain one very surprising and in our just-in-time economy very important fact about a large blackout is that at gas filling stations you can fill up any longer because the pumps depend on the public grid so many tankers transporting milk from farmers to the Ares I grounded or stranded after a few hours if they can't fill up the tanks any longer in the dairies milk can't be protests any longer because most of them don't have emergency backup at the day already finished products in the refrigerated warehouses turns sour soon as the emergency supply runs out which is after a few hours maximum a few day if they had any transportation from Derry to retail chain warehouses and on to supermarkets faced the same problem as the milk tankers yeah but Germany starts food full and oil for three months as a strategical stock you might say that's right but as we can see under the circumstances it's not able to distribute it over the country at the supermarket's everything depends on electronics without electronic warehouse systems employees no longer know what's in stock and watch not cooling and freezing systems stop electronic cash mines don't work neither to credit or bank cards electric door openers air conditioning etc everything fails some employees can show up for work because the tanks of their cars are empty and public transport stopped so under these circumstances employees have the order to close the shop but let's get back to the beginning of the chain once more modern milk production is no longer the romantic farms you see in commercials they are milk manufacturing plants rearing hundreds or thousands of cows bred to give milk up to 40 meter 40 liters a day one cow these plans don't work without automated feeding heating ventilating cleaning and milking machines so after powers of emergency power supply ran out farmers can feed nurture milk only a small fraction of the cows by hand the rest suffers an agonizing death by inflamed and bursting others tighter by hunger and thirst and lack of air because farmers even lack measures and resources for emergencies larger all industrialized farming suffers the same fate feed pigs poultry glasshouse vegetables or silos which depend on the automated regulation of temperature and humidity industrial production generally stops almost immediately cash and money supply depend on the grid well at least you can pay bills the water supply systems also depend on the power grid remember the toilet I mentioned before pharmacies face the same problems supermarkets hospitals usually run out of supply of emergency power supply after two days but they are organized like a modern car manufacturing plant anyway so they are provided with medication food clothes and other stuff every day by external service providers whose employees no longer show up for work whose cars no longer drive whose machines no longer work so I think by now you get the idea of interdependencies out we only have can have a rough guess about people's behavior but to quote the famous scene from Britain's mi5 we have four meals from Anarchy so these were only a few examples which happens each day two to four at a large blackout in today's complex and interdependent societies for the rest of the story read blackout so as we have seen a developed society like ours completely depends on these hidden structures today already new developments like the coming Internet of Things will hate will will raise this complexity and interdependencies to new heights so visions of future cities we just saw some pictures and some interesting graphics like the smart city largely rely on the optimized management of very complex systems it doesn't get easier by the fact that growing complete complexity leads to more unforeseeable failures and come out outcomes so there's a lot of visions and ideas but no sufficient ends as yet to these growing challenges I am not offer any either today but I hope I could raise your awareness for your position as an individual a company or a community in today's connected interdependent and complex society because awareness is the first step to solutions by the way we are talking not only power supply or information technologies but any growingly complex social political economic or environmental system like for example the climate so in this world also autonomy or independence exists less than ever even if you drop out and retreat to the woods because like pollution or climate change will you affect there too so strategies like selfishness selfishness egoism or the larger brethren patriotism nationalism protectionism only nurture the illusion that you could drop out of the system which you can't as we just saw so there might be at least one answer to these questions its general it's not new but it's more important than ever talk share exchange collaborate like we do here today because it's the first and crucial strategy on every level individual local national or international in order to bring brighter times to every one of us thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 40,100

Keywords: ted, tedx talk, ted talk, TEDx, ted talks, tedx talks, tedx, ted x

Id: YuM5iCn_iKI

Length: 15min 37sec (937 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 09 2013