off. i think one of the reasons why people have been drawn to the kindle and ipad is the single window, where it's a device that will not have you multiple windows open. somehow it's nice not to have three windows open in front of you. you're looking at one at a time. i think there's a big role for people to software, simplifying and not having this constant multitasking barrage because it's hard to process, it's hard to step away. last question. >> first of all i want to say i'm so glad you are talking about innovation, or the desire -- my question is about an op-ed in the "new york times," april 26, by mark taylor, a professor at columbia.

he was suggesting academics should move away from disciplinary a move to problem-based learning which is something that i sort of heard you whispering about throughout your talk today. how would you reorganize how universities deliver information if you are the czar of the world? >> right. we're ending with a very simple question, answer. [laughter] >> and i do think of myself as bizarre of the world sometimes. so, i think we've started to realize, look, it's easy -- i don't want to be cheap about specialization. i've written these books that really celebrate multiple dysentery people, but the truth is when you go back and look at some of my looks, it was a lot easier to be a polymath back in because there was a whole universe of phenomena that had not yet had the scientific method applied to it yet. it was all relatively new.

so you could literally discover new elements in your kitchen sink and be the first to do it, or the second to do it. you can't do that anymore. we have built this amazing power of knowledge, and to be able to advance in the field you have to to spend a lot of time learning a lot of information so you can then put the envelope further. on the other hand, i think we have realized that there are certain kinds of problems, and sometimes the most important problems in life, they can't be solved within the confines of a single -- we can't understand climate change from within a single discipline. it is by definition a multidisciplinary problem. it has to be approached from a microbiologist perspective and an energy perspective and a sociologist's perspective. we think about coulter and we think about cultural change and why society has changed, white political movements happen, these are all problems that cannot be solved on a single domain. so i think universities are starting to realize that there

has to be these interesting kind of collaborative hybrid spaces for people, one, just learned how to talk to each other. you develop a crazy jargon that nobody outside your field can understand. so you develop these new ways of talking to develop programs that are by definition kind of emotional -- multidisciplinary. that is happening. and i think this is what i try and do with my work is, you know, and talking to a broader popular audience is to say okay, it's good to spend some time with books that take you across different disciplines and make connections, and for me it's the greatest job in the world because i just get to go around and follow these trails and talk to these experts in these fields and listen to them and steal from them basically and remix their ideas in new ways. so part of what i try to do as a writer is to convey some of that, the joy that i have in

doing that and to pass that along to my readers and hope that it's infectious in some way. not in the cholera kind of infectious way. but all of us, by having these conversations and by showing up in our own kind of coffeehouses and by thinking about our schools and using our schools that would, i think we can advance that cause. thank you so much. this was a really special night. [applause] >> thank you. thank you all for coming and enjoy the book. [applause] speak of steven johnson a contributing editor at wired magazine magazine, is the author of "the invention of air" and "the ghost map." for more information visit stevenberlinjohnson.com. >> scott huler's latest book "on the grid" takes a look at the system that brings peoples the

basic services. quail ridge books in raleigh, north carolina, is the host of this talk. it's about an hour. speaker everyone struggle to buy writing a book will fix you. so i tell people do not write a book. there are so many reasons why shouldn't write about. the main reason is don't write about because it will get you rich. it will not. cannot write about because it will get you famous. it will not. cannot my book because it will get you dates. how may ways will writing a book not get you a date? you care something about something so much were you are stopping people and saying look, guess what i just found out. let me tell you how they treat water. you probably didn't know this project to care about something so much that you're that enthusiastic about it because otherwise writing a book will be an enormous waste of your time and everybody else's time. the one thing you really get out of writing a book is souvenirs.

i think i have, i wrote a book about the obviously allowed to. i have a white alabaster bust that sits on my desk that i wrote a book about the win. i have a piece of the string from a sailing ship. when i was writing this book, i came home with this, this. you can see that this is the top of a water bill. what's the correct term for this? john. a valve cover. thank you. [laughter] >> i spent the better time of inaction -- this will be for show and tell can anybody that wants to see can come and see. the camera can pick it up if it needs to. i spent most of an afternoon watching a crew, the raleigh public utilities at a valve on a water main without turning off the water. an amazing thing. they put a new valve in without even stopping the flow of the

water. they should blow your mind. i hope it does. i watched for hours. at the end, they guy said to me, one of the managers of the site said, well, do you want that as a souvenir? and today, everything you need to know about these and i said yes. yes. yes. and i took at home and it is in my office now. [inaudible] >> pardon me? [inaudible] >> that would solve the whole problem. that's a great idea. that's better than any of the ideas they had so far. speaking of infrastructure, right? in fact yesterday was a great day for infrastructure people. if you're paying attention to infrastructure we have someone, sadly, get badly injured on capital boulevard trying to cross an uncrossable street. that's an infrastructure issue. went to water main breaks including we had a nice geyser

that channel five showed. and we had our main reservoir turn up to put her to go swimming in. so these are all issues about your infrastructure. and only two of those things got about an inch and a half in the news. these are things we need to pay attention to because i think they're vitally important. how did i get so interested in this? i like to tell people to start out one of my story about architecture. and architect explain to me everything in your house, everything in the building you're standing in, somebody thought about that. there's a light switch, the architect put it there. if you reach for it and there it is, the architect did a good job. if you swing open the door and the light switch is behind the door, the architect dropped the ball there. i had never really thought about

it. this was sort of a transformational book to me, and he does that. he follows processes and understands how things were. how did that happen, how did that get there, how did that thing exist? then he moved from philadelphia to where things are falling down on people's heads to raleigh, north carolina, where people are building. and as you know living here in raleigh, if you drive out maybe eight and a half miles from the capitol building out in any direction, you come out to with the city is kind of that has to sizing. it's still growing like one of the things from science fiction. but you see what i started calling the balance of infrastructure. the trenches for different pipe and you think, all kinds of things going on. i was so interested. what are they doing and how does it work and what's happening? and then right before hurricane

fran i did a story on storm water because i wanted to know -- we had like three and a half inches of rain, i did the math. always dangers. i did the math and figure out on the 104 square miles of raleigh we should be up to our necks in water from that little rain. and how were we not drowning? then hurricane fran came by and it rained very much all by itself. so as time went on i became more and more interest in sort of how does that work and what's going on? and then the best thing of all of possible things have i had a little boy. we were pushing around in a store and he fell in love with man covers. and you know what it's like pushing around a one year old in a stroller and they see the object of their desire. a manhole with keith interview

and he would, there's one, there's one. would go further and further. oh, god, what's in there and what's under the manhole? and i was a what's under there is, you know, that stuff. because you start thinking, it's a similar right likes maybe. could be. it could be freshwater. it could be waste water. it could be storm water. it could be telecommunications equipment. it could be electricity. there's so much infrastructure. infra- means below. we'll be any attention to it at all. so i became more and more interested in one of the things i will tell you right off the bat is the american public association, one of the favorite things i have heard in my entire life, has a code for the colors they used to mark the streets but have you ever walked along the streets and there's a blue dotted line and red triangles and all this kind of stuff? what's that?

you can know what that stuff is. read -- you can know. people know. it's not secret. white means proposed excavation where they will dig. pinkies survey markings. red is power line. yellow is gas, oil line. orange is communication. blue is water. green's wastewater and purple which were now seeing in raleigh is reused water. water for irrigation and things like that. you can see what's going in one direction or another. i get so interested in all this, and then we had an unforgettable event here in raleigh which was a drought a few years ago. a drought of biblical proportions as we all saw under country -- as we all saw.

the people from deliverance were down underneath the lake. you could stand and turn on the dark side of the move. if you got lost, you could leave the water running and when you're done the water would still be running because we will never run out of water. how was at all happening? i needed to understand. i needed to understand that the last thing i will bring attention before we talk with the book itself is something better ran across in co-evolution quarterly from 1981. kind of a crunch and 1970s, early '80s thing. but there's a list of questions called the where are you? question of what is trace the water you drink. it asks you what solicitor's are you standing on? what was the total rainfall in your area last year? where does your garbage go?

what is the land history of where you live? most of us don't know the answers to any of these questions. and i thought that's terrible. i ought to know because -- i'm sort of ashamed of myself how little i know about how much. and so i started looking. i wanted to see what was going on. is especially i think because of garbage. in our drought to the city council took six but it will be decided we should stop watering our lawns. and then finally they decide to take this position that they should ban garbage disposal. a truly great moment in raleigh's political history. you'll get my garbage disposal when you pry my cold dead fingers.

it was on the internet. and so, my first thing was to laugh, if that i look into it a bit and it turns out that banning a garbage disposal is a great idea. a garbage disposal interacts with five different personal systems. every time you use it. freshwater, and all other negative. freshwater when you run a garbage disposal. we have to put freshwater right down the drain. we all learned that's a bad idea. electricity, it's burning choose. not a lot but it is burning choose. then why did it and a garbage disposal in the first place. the food got in there and it was clogging up the pipes. that was no good. and then you're putting food down there that could escalate into compost pile which is good or at worst go into the landfill which helps the landfill

generates a nice methane gas. so that's another loss. then obviously when a sanitary sewer overflows, that water has to go somewhere and it ruins your strong water system. you call the garbage disposal, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose disposition. i have a two year-old and i wouldn't want to be without mine, but i really got interested so i spent about two years of a life that was fundamentally like the best six graded field trips of your dreams. i went to the water plant and i went to the wastewater plant and i went to the nuclear plant and i went to the landfill. and if you haven't been to the landfill, you have to go to the landfill because they drive steamrollers there with spikes on them. that's what i want to do now for the rest of my life is drive one of the steamrollers and a mashed up the trash. it's really a place you should

go. all these places, if you make the effort, we'll let you been. mostly they will let you been. the nuclear plant they let you in. they have a guy at the door with a machine gun. they do now i'm glad to do but if you do your work, you can probably get in the. a gas company never lets people in. the gas company is deeply concerned about osama bin laden reading my book and learning where -- the funny thing is, not only would they not take me, they would not tell me where it was. i got on google maps. oh, the great big tank that says the name of the gas comfort on the site. so, you know, i'm not sure that security is really the right way -- they are doing it the right way. but we want to be secure. so, i spent years cramming around underneath, a year or so swimming around underneath the

streets of raleigh in a storm water systems. there are people here who were my cell phone buddies who i would go okay, i'm going into if you don't hear from me by 3:00, please call 911 and then the june. nobody ever had to. so i just went everyplace, and i tried to get a sense of the complexity of the interrelated, the amazing us of the systems. so i will redo a passage from this book and how that ended up and where it got me, and then talk to you for just another minute and then i hope you have lots of questions. that's a lot more interesting than me talking to you. this is the beginning of the last chapter of the book. the chapter is called a virtue of necessity, regarding engineers, taxes and what you paid for. early in my inspiration i took a side off the main covert channeling the pigeon house branch beneath central raleigh.

been low in a five-foot concrete tunnel i splashed my way upstream in a triply float until i saw something odd, daylight. i quickly reached what turned out to be a whole of some kind of dirt, broken pipe and pieces of asphalt jungle together with colbert had collapsed. i crept forward and something had a better look only to hear the beep, beep of a reversing piece of heavy equipment and buy myself staring at a heavy back a. i scuttle back and a moment i heard tobacco in jim stout. i slowly start my head out again and chatted don't dig me. the engineer back a driver and other workers presented open mouth, i popped up like a whack-a-mole. what has happened i learned was that a track called sent to excavate a patch of sinking pavement a few days before that itself caused for the class and fell into the hole. the current crew was using a lighter back of to dig its way

through the clouds to investigate. since i came from underground the engineer as if i'd mind going back down and shooting a couple of pictures inside the covert, especially at a crossing want me under which i have yet to get to the whole. that afternoon gave me my first sense of how truly intertwined all these systems are. the engineer asked me to take pictures because of graphical information, maps and records, he wasn't at all sure what lay under that collapsed straight. the next city engineer i spoke with explained what the city would have to move in order to fix the hole. for this one, she said, i think telephone, cable, electricity, fiber-optic, gas, water, and even moving a poll is a simple because you have to wait to find out who owns it and the for everybody to do their work. whoever owns the pool,

electricity or telephone company would have to work with the city to choose a place with a new city, then install, and then the utilities would have to rerun their lives. that could be a week right there. and assistance are not complex just because they hang from the same pool. or because they require one another's assistance to work. try generating electricity without water to cool the generator or treating water without electric pulse. tried either without fiber optics. they're becoming more complex every day just in what they do, and what they do we can no longer do without. everybody knows somebody who is probably going off the grid, right? the wind generator plants downloaded from the internet, and the pipe bought at home depot to channel the water. you can't go off the grid anymore. we are all on the grid. we are on the grid, and it is miraculous. it's the eighth wonder of the

modern world. that's the introduction to the conclusion. [applause] >> and i really think, i really believe that. i think, i start out as sort of a real geek in the first place because i wanted to do this but i ended up so in love with these systems, and amazed by what they can do, what they do, how rarely they fail. i'm working on a video piece for the city of raleigh about the water systems right now, and you have no idea what questions why do people ask you. because as proud as the cable people are, they are 99 plus%. they are 99.9%. we always have the system. a lot of people pretty much

never stop functioning. they're very proud of that, and they should be. that people are are out there doing these jobs think of themselves as public health workers. and they are also, they understand what they're doing. there was a guy who i've watched fishing backlog of a manhole. they used like a 20-foot shuffle with occurred in that they call a spoon that they go down there and they can pull stuff up, like fishing all of this article each dud bleached out with a teaspoon. he was doing this with kind of a complex thing and he turned to me and said, people think it's tidy bowl that keeps the bathroom clean. that was a great moment. that's why i now do. that's what i matter, to meet these people and see what it is they do. and one of the things that i did when i started this is i didn't want to be al gore, screw in the curly lightbulbs right now tomorrow. the ice is coming off greenland.

we're all going to drown. and i didn't want to be dick cheney and shut up and keep driving either. i just wanted to get in the middle and say, how does it work? this miraculous stuff, how does it happen? and i did that, and for a large part i kept my fairness have on -- fairness had on. until i start talking to a guy named eric, a fabulous comic genius writer right here in the city of raleigh. i asked him what are the things things are never out of your head when you're managing a traffic issue when you are thinking of where a signal should be, or painting or widening or narrowing, any of these things because i think about? i'm thinking transportation or traffic flow or speed or safety or convenience for asphalt and concrete or whatever. and he said two things that are never away from i thought.

money and political view. those are the two things. he never stops thinking about. and i will tell you that without exception, every person who really thinks about this that i interviewed for the book, and i mean every person said the same thing. we face no technological issues that we can never resolve that there are no technological problems, there's no hurdle we can't get over. whether we care to pay to go over the hurdles, to get the systems we need, to maintain the systems that we need, to improve the systems, that is a very different question. we can do anything we need to do. whether we care to do it is a whole different question, which is what i ended up writing what turns out to be something of a love letter to pay taxes as the conclusion to this book, because i don't want to be the generation, children or grandchildren say is a true that when you were growing up you had

-- you had electricity every day? but that's what we're going if we don't pay for it. in 1981, a great book came out called america in ruins, and there was a wonderful quote their that the author said, the man on the street is perfectly happy -- [inaudible] >> they do the conclusion that we're $845 billion in arrears at that point ,-comthem and they judge that terrible crisis. and now 30 years later, we are according to the american society of civil engineers, to put $2 trillion behind on what we owe. and again, it's a crisis. they gave our water

infrastructure a d. and boston the water system blue up. that's what a d- in infrastructure looks like. we should get used to that. because that's where we are all headed and as you take out your wallet and smile. the other thing that you could do is spend $10 a piece and go to home depot and get a hard hat. because it's going to come down on our heads. but it really will. now, that's basically what this book is about. i take each systems of each chapter is a particular system and i trace it. i use my house in five points in raleigh, and i stuff my house and go upstream, where does the water come from? from? i go downstream, what is the wastewater go? i go through the airways, how do i get my wireless? does anybody know that your

wireless calls spend 99% of its life on fiber optics? issue to be when you would make a long distance land call it within all of its life going through the air. these were actually wireless and whenever wireless is on land lines. that's what some of the fastening stuff that i found that. i can't tell you how many cool things i found out. did you know that they'll intended a telephone that we all know how a microphone works. the vibrations in the air move the magnet within the coil. that generates electricity and into a speaker that untangles the whole thing began and makes the noise. well, he hung a mirror in the magnet and directed sunlight at it but then bounced to another photoelectric cell. and you would talk and amir would vibrate, and in the

vibrated -- the vibrated light it would re-create your voice. in 1880 he did this. you know, that's amazing. and this stuff, it's just complex. who thought of bringing water into our house is? who said that's a great idea. that's probably the carpenters, right clicks. [inaudible] that's the joke. but each one of the systems start somewhere and it ends somewhere, and it came from somewhere and it work somehow. and i finally came to the conclusion it's just not moral for us to have these lives made it easy for us and to know nothing about how it works. so i wrote the book, and to talk about it for geologic time, but

i think if there's any questions, why don't we discuss them. go ahead. >> i have kind of a two-part question. who ultimately did you want to educate with this book? and secondly, how are you using social media to promote your book? >> well, they will answer your question about social media. ..

issued a squirrel? he actually said that to me. quoted in the book. he is right. we don't know anything. we're like infants and that is okay because thank god for the engineers. it is fabulous what they are doing for us. but we are not paying for it. all i want is for us to pay for it and for people to understand what is happening. every system that i went into for this book starts with storm water. the bush showing me how a curb and gutter system works. once on understand that this should you need to understand the entire storm water management system is under radical revolutionary change. some sort of stream restoration learning we can take storm water

of property rather than -- somebody told me that a modern suburb is a machine for turning green water into garbage. and we stop doing that and that is interesting. that was well timed. then i went to fresh water and you need to understand where we manage freshwater is under complete and radical change. every system because of technological change is going quickly to say nothing of the grid with a smart grid whatever that turns out to be that slows communications. you have telephone and cable and they are all running to turn into each other at the speed of light. trying to keep up with that. those people don't need me to educate them about how important it is but the people who use the system every day, people look at the way we live, what happens when your cellphone has a bad

signal? you are furious, your furrowing things. that is insane. you should be on your knees thanking whatever god you have every second that we have these things that makes it possible just like computers where we couldn't do our jobs without them and spent all day complaining about them. does that answer your question in any way? do come close? social media, i am freelance writer. i used to tell people that running your own riding shot, you spent pretty% of your time as an agent and as an office manager, and in information technology and in your spare time you write. and that was before facebook and twitter and before you had to spend all day every day telling people what you have just written or what you mean to write or plan to write if you

ever get time off social media to go back to doing that. so -- on the other hand i love it. it is great because i have met sources through those media, i have found work through those media. i have been introduced to other people through those media. i have followers who i hope is tweeting constantly. turned that on. turn of yourself and -- this would be too easy. and so i am trying to do it and that is where the game is played now. that is where all games are played. it is frustrating and to we figure out a way to manage it and make it part of our world rather than tails wagging our dog. that is what i try to do. does that make sense?

>> your fascination with the technical advancement of the -- and you are also impressed by the low tech aspects. which fascinated you more? the technical advancement? >> i will tell you the coolest thing. everybody knows about multiplexes how everything works now. all of our communication. that is the solution. rather than i will send you a message and when you have no message you will send me one on the way. messages back-and-forth at the same time. i'm not an electron gun. but what they're doing, fiber-optic, they have different colors of light going over the same thing so there's no limit to the amount of information that can be set. like naked kings rolling around

in gold coins. but multiplexesing was invented during the roman empire. when the olive oil manufacturers in the mountains of libya wanted to get their olive oil to the coast for shipping they could put it on a card and take days and days but then there redi's and conducts. wait a minute so they dumped the olive oil in the neck with the can when they came to the big systems at the end the oliver wilson operated out and there it was. it is so brilliant and so amazing and we are no smarter than they were. it is stuff like that, it is the good ideas that blow my mind and there are so many good ideas and a good idea of today doesn't

mean the good idea of 50 years ago that turned out to be wrong means those people were wrong either. one of the things that happened in raleigh as everybody knows, you may not know that in 1949 when they were opening cameron village that the pension house branch that lights the cargo went insane because it was the first grade big parking lot we had here so every time it rained, the pigeon house was out of its banks and terrorizing people. so the engineers figure out we're going to deepen it, we're going to tranche it, we are going to straighten it out and we are going to build walls around it. and they went home and went to bed and set our solve the problem today and slept great that night and good for them. we are undoing all of that. we are undoing all of that. that was all wrong. it was a terrible mistake. now we have to undo it to fix

our world because one of the storm water and engineers called it a short circuit and hydrological cycle because the storm water is supposed to recharge the aquifers and streams and rivers and feed the trees and animals and all that stuff. if you just dump it in the stream and it goes ranging down fremont and salt water in 20 minutes that is a loss and not just because it is bad for the earth but all that work, a short circuit in electric system isn't just bad because electricity is going out of the loophole but because you are not making your toast because your toaster isn't working. the problem with storm water is not just that it is no good for the plant but water isn't doing its job. i like the technical stuff and i like seeing the glowing blue

fuel. the guy told me if you jumped down on that water to playfully touch that 23 feet deep by the time you touch it you will be dead. a wasn't even going to do it. >> i don't know if it is a question or a comment, but i spent time where pressure doesn't exist. i can in revision living in a part of the world where the structure is being able to compare and contrast or offer humor to the situation or think about it. >> making jokes, i would enjoy that as well. one of the interesting things. i was on a show called living on earth that hasn't run yet but i

was on at the same time as a fellow who wrote a book called off the grid. he was making the case that things like municipal water systems are bad. i did say at one point there are a billion people on this planet who when you say something like that put their heads in their hands and wave because of who among us if we elect it would not sacrifice a limb to get access to those for our children. is point was they can't take estrogen out of the water. that is a good point. to use reverse osmosis to get everything out that we can get out will be so enormously expensive no one wants to pay for it and we haven't found a way. you might look in the mirror to find that. and how many problems with the

grid, i include electric utilities and bad guys we point at. we are the cocaine user and stop the people in colombia from shipping cocaine. look what is going on in the gulf. added terrible, that is how we live. there's no way around that. if you are going to dig a hole a mile and under the sea that is dirty business. you have to be aware of that. i am not aware of it for a minute. [inaudible] >> i came out of this -- the

only solution. this is what we must do without going to candles and quill pens. i was very much -- graduated from college in 1981. three mile island was a big part of my world. that is why feel now. the nrc was in bed with nuclear power. just like the oil companies are now. we were going and trips with them. we have a much better situation now. the people who ran the nuclear plant made it clear about how seriously and how many safety situations. amazing stuff. something that change -- i like

to say i changed my mind. people don't do that very often. >> of of everything you have seen in the last two years what was the single coolest thing you got to see? [laughter] >> the single coolest thing would probably either be spent fuel rods or that steam roller with the spikes. i really liked that. that was cool. everyone of these systems maybe this was the coolest thing that i saw, i was under the city, those heads from great outdoor provision companies, and made redneck waiters in my hiking boots, and one of these beautiful brick archways, to

practice you have crouch so low. really quite pretty and sort of a dam behind it whether it was natural or not and water flows over to pitch down and at the bottom underneath there is no life. it is underground. it was trying to dig a little cool -- trying to dig a hole and our had an understanding that this was a flow of water that wants to be under. it is a river, that is what it wants to do. we have run it underneath the city but what it knows is to be a river and i want -- it was such an amazing moment, crouched underneath this vehicle under the city. it is a good example of that.

to be down there, the natural process still trying to happen. >> it is eerie serious but any innovation you came across, what we talk about all the time. did you see anything innovative in those areas? >> the smart grid is what everyone is talking about. and figure out ways to manage data and have that system go both ways to generate electricity and then you have a machine at your house and enable you to call up -- get on the web for whenever and that kind of thing and also help you buy electricity when it is cheap and

run your washing machine and generate and sell it back to the grid and store it with electric power and all this kind of stuff. i was not as impressed with the electrical engineers, the smart grid is ready to happen tomorrow but were we waiting for? we are waiting for battery technologies that enable us to save this, and we are waiting for this computer system and chips and stuff. then we are ready. isn't that like saying we are waiting for a small improvement in shoulder technology and traffic problems -- no, that is just going to happen. they will get where they need to. little tiny things like silver discs on your water fowl of that

goes to your house and water meter, a guy drives slowly down your street and broadcasts your water statistics. i am not really in favor of fewer people walking on earth. i like people walking and doing things. if little things like this are constantly moving forward. agreed example of a new piece of technology in water is and $90 million water plant. it is terrible. the army would have thought it was princess diana's wedding. we all ran around in circles waiving our arms for two months. how often does anybody go here? maybe twice a year. maybe twice in two years. new water plants. how often do you use water?

everyone uses 100 gallons plus. day. we build a new water plant and didn't even run a picture. at this plant if you have there been to a water plant is a place where they put chemicals in the water to coalesce all the crack at it settles to the bottom. that is the technical term. the romans were doing it with poland's. they are putting all month oil in the start to do the same thing. we haven't thought of anything. the new plant instead of these, very short things called superpulse so tiny you could just with will. the superpulsator as these tangled plates so that what would you say? a fifth of the surface area or a tenth of the surface area, that stuff settles on these plates and rolls to the bottom.

then it uses something that does flocculent. it then pushes the water up through that and uses a filter. who thinks of this stuff? it is amazing. that every now and then it goes -- and it drops a vacuum chamber full of water sending out a pulse through the water and that evens out the flock blanket. how cool is this stuff? it is amazing. it is amazing and you should care about it. you should want to pay more for it. >> you are really glass half full here. ever since i read the book world is out, i had a horrible vision in my mind of all the styrofoam

and containers that are piling up in the ocean and they are piling up in landfills. did you talk to anybody who gives you any hope about that? >> short. landfills, that is another thing to talk about. disposable diapers were indeed devil incarnate. it turns out the union of concerned scientists by using these i am helping the planet. because if you live in a place where water is more of an issue than solid-waste then the water you use to clean those diapers and watch those diapers and the energy to boil the water is

worse for your neighborhood than digging a hole and burying them. in a place like that, plenty of space for landfills. there is no question. it is better to use them and the british version of the epa did a study where the carbon footprint of one diaper over the two year life span was great. the carbon footprint on the enormous pile -- because of all water you are boiling and the water that is used to make the diaper in the first place. i was thrilled by that. but the question about feeling better about the -- nothing could make me feel better about that. i don't really have much hope that we will stop dumping stuff in the ocean.

i am very thrilled by the system. i am not a glass half full guy about whether we will do what it takes to -- that was a great book and i had great conversations with the editor. i am very worried that we won't do that. that we are heading in the wrong direction. david mahler works with duke energy and is one of their think out of the box guys. he was a therapist for a while. it is true in energy and everything else. people only change their habits for two reasons. there are only 2 reasons. one is it becomes too expensive to do what you're doing and the other is it is too painful. i think that is when we're going to change. book happened with gas. when it was $4 a gallon we got

off and when it came down we got right back on. is crazy and so hard to fix the problems of last generation. raleigh really wants to do transportation. we are trying to do that and all these good things. but it is so hard to resolve the errors we made over the last half century. it will take time and money. can't i pay for more? that is not how we act. >> a couple years ago you mentioned drought and conserve water and low flush toilets and all that good stuff, now we are not using enough water so we have to pay more for water. it does not seem very fair but i should be happy because we have -- [talking over each other]

>> of this costs enough. money changes behavior. if it costs more we would change behavior. next time you buy your little bottle of water because we can't walk around without it, it cost some one dollar and $0.95. that would buy you 600 gallons of water on your tap. that is not enough. it should cost more because it is a miracle and we would treat it with more respect if we were paying somewhere near what it is worth. same thing with electricity. we would not be leaving the lights on or the computer on all night because in the morning you just check your e-mail in a second rather than turning on and waiting a whole minute. but we have to stop that. the electric utilities talk about the virtual power plant which is the plant they don't

have to build because they teach you to conserve. you talk about the virtual treatment plant because we are doing better and that is great and i am all for it but both of those entities make their money by selling you bad stuff. if we can serve more and they want to keep paying the same to do what they do they have to charge us more. there are no options about that. i am for it. i think we should pay more for our water and when electric utility say we're glad to work with you and conservation, you spend less on electricity but have to find a new model because right now we make our money -- how is that working for us? that is a fair thing for them to ask, that we have to work this out together. they are not the bad guys. even bp, those are very bad but the bad guys are us. we are the ones who need it and that made change our behavior.

they are worse but we're still very -- >> you wrote a book about the history of these things. very different places. do you find that this idea that there is much less political will for infrastructure for something that already exists, change the way from an old way to a modern way, technology that is -- [inaudible] -- to begin with. across several generations of telephones, cellphone, and landlines. and infrastructure for sofa's because it is easier. much easier to modify completely

dry structure. >> it is much easier to start fresh. that is an easy thing. a guy i was arguing with about whether municipal water systems heard, in africa they don't have that kind of municipal water and may not need it. i am sure that is true. but we do have this technology. you can't advocate ripping it out. sometimes it is almost as expensive to maintain as it would be to build a whole new one. is that really what you want to do? do you want to replace it when it is working? i don't think so. nobody ever got reelected for filling potholes. there is no ribbon cutting for stuff like that. they like to build new things, not raise taxes to maintain old things. that is the hard things we are

not doing. the point i keep harping on, the u.s. spends 2.2% of gdp on infrastructure. europe is twice that much and in china about 9%. if you are wondering why we are falling behind it is because that is what we are choosing to do. >> are there infrastructures that are vastly superior to ours that we should model ourselves after? >> the training infrastructure all over the smart world. we're starting to try to do that but again that is something that we had. we were the envy of the world years ago. powertrain infrastructure. then we got all excited about our cars and stopped. it is an interesting thing because it is such a complex question. don't forget the reason we had that train infrastructure was

because the government gave way 7% of the continental land mass of the united states to the railroad. they gave it away. build a railroad. that seems terrible yet i am glad we have that. then came roads and an electric lines. you build natural pathways and we needed that. we're running out of time so i will say thank you so much for coming in and i enjoyed this and thank you very much. [applause] >> scott huler has written for several publications including the new york times and fortune magazine. "on the grid" is his sixth book. visit scotthuler.com. you have been watching booktv. 48 hours of book programming beginning saturday morning for a