Wired
Wired
The chapter considers the differences between already-wired and yet-to-be-wired areas and users. It traces the emergence of an electricity-regime, made of street lamps, authorized caretakers, rules and regulations, professional practices, and current-meters. Current-meters are singled out as boundary objects that enact a public sphere of a ’general distribution network’ and a private sphere of individual consumers. In the former, current meters provide data that facilitate the production of knowledge about varying levels of electricity consumption. The physical expansion of the electric grid, the emergence of an electricity-regime, and the construction of different categories of users serve as means for analyzing a new social category: electricity consumers. The chapter theorizes electricity consumers as essential contact-points that process electric current and enable its ongoing circulation. It also reflects on wired-life in general as a transcendence of the subject/object dichotomy in sociology.
Keywords: Electricity-consumers, internet-addiction, distribution-systems, public/private, Electricity Ordinance, Herbert Samuel
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