David E. Nye

Technology matters, writes David Nye, because it is inseparable from being human. We have used tools for more than 100,000 years, and their central purpose has not always been to provide necessities. People excel at using old tools to solve new problems and at inventing new tools for more elegant solutions to old …

Blackouts―whether they result from military planning, network failure, human error, or terrorism―offer snapshots of electricity's increasingly central role in American society.Where were you when the lights went out? At home during a thunderstorm? During the Great Northeastern Blackout of 1965? In California when …