New systems are central to imagining future scenarios. The structures of governance and the power network in Britain during both case studies demonstrated the forms of expertise that were intended to sustain a sense of normalcy when infrastructures were breaking down, examples included are government information campaigns and electricity distributor knowledge (5.3). Those who undertook methods of infrastructuring a new public were able to sustain themselves throughout the disruption. In the case studies the public was presented as ‘suffering’ due to disruption (4.2). Recent technologies, such as smartphones, ‘make the future present’ for ‘ordinary people’ (Kinsley, 2010). In 1974, a shift in policy, the need to
168 conserve energy was translated and visualised for the public into an information campaign, presenting a corporate led future vision into the homes of those who would be living through the wanted changes. No other films were created with the same approach, daily editing was necessary as it was not initially clear which parts of the system would be affected by the crisis, demonstrating again how the system becomes visible during disruption and not prior to the event.
Prior to the event individuals are the ones who drive demand and dependence on the system, during the event, publics having knowledge of the system are able to live through disruption.
However, after the event newly obtained knowledge is central to restoration and maintenance so that the system can go ‘back to normal’ and transformative practices can be put into place. Within transitional and transformative models of change, innovation is often considered to be the driver of development (Moraglio, 2015). Transitional models acknowledge that we are living in ‘transitional times,’ taking as their central premise the need for societal transition (systems-level change) to more sustainable futures. Connected to long horizons of time and compelling visions of sustainable futures, they assert that the transition must be based upon new knowledge and skill sets. Transformative models take a situation and view the future as requiring a radical overhaul of current practices. Caution should be taken when considering the future within a framework of advanced technologies on a massive scale, those which are inclusive, accessible and readily available to all. Within both case studies, there was a sense of ‘making sure this doesn’t happen again’, yet this was tarred by the complexity of the infrastructure in place.
In Chapter Four, the analysis mapped and interpreted the threat of national power cuts against a backdrop of management, leisure, time, beliefs and change. It demonstrated the nature of crisis on a national level; within this scenario, the future can be viewed as the
‘mechanisms and tendencies of change and transformation, and those directions of the transformation in society’ (Hobsbawm, 1981: 3). The disruption to leisure activities such as football demonstrates the impact of ‘suspended time’, yet the return to normal kick-off times, soon after the crisis was deemed to have ended, shows how the structures of everyday life were not significantly altered. The three-day week may have been a suspension of day-to-day
169 work, but as an interruption of normal governing structures it created a way of looking towards an everyday future that incorporated a different scenario than previously acknowledged This unknown future was translated into a present that required a new way of understanding the complexity at play within energy infrastructures.
The complexities of the relationship between publics and the infrastructure system became visible in 1974, through the public information campaign ‘Switch off Something’ (4.4). The campaign was not about an innovative means of decreasing energy demand or production, but rather economising in order to maintain the power supply and provide vital industries with an uncompromised supply of power. Simple home economies put into place were acts to maintain the power systems, both political and social. This began a new ‘social future’ and a shift from the individual not only being part of a nation that had recovered from the Second World War thanks to nationalised industries, but additionally they became responsible for their own relationship with power and electricity, fitting into a larger scale of ‘systemness’, the socio-technical networks, infrastructures and design protocols that dictate day-to-day life.
Analysis of the discourses employed in everyday life by ‘ordinary people’ needs to consider their engagement with infrastructure systems, pre-empting and anticipating what is to come (Anderson 2009, 2010), be that disruption or a steady path. The face of power, its tangibility and how it manifests are inherent to understanding Social Futures as without it. Practices used in the past are redeployed in future, though under different circumstances.
There is a strong relationship between maintenance and design, as Thrift notes ‘technological paradigms oriented towards the fetishistic generation of accelerating waves of quickly disposed of hard products could be reorganized around longer- term and sustainable systems of service delivery designed from the outset to be easily and continually upgraded" (2014:9) the purpose of design is not just to build an artefact to fulfil some genuine social need “out there” but also to make us reflect on how that need has emerged, how it has become a project worth pursuing, and how, all things considered, it may actually not be worth pursuing at all’
(Morozov, 2013: 329).
170 The ability to change and alter the content of the film ‘Switch off Some Power’ demonstrates that even within a changing future, the knowledge of what would be required was uncertain.
However, instead of presenting uncertainty as something which was detrimental it was used as a catalyst for preventing certain scenarios from occurring. After the event, electricity was no longer sold in abundance with accompanying products and technologies; instead the network became a tool for maintaining ideas of nation and communities. Here ideas about the nation are synonymous with the people who reside there, the need to support nationalised industries as state-intervention could only achieve so much. Practices used in the past are redeployed in future, though under different circumstances. No other public information films were created with the same temporal approach. Daily editing was necessary to not only highlight why the public needed to save power, but to keep updated what needed to be maintained during disruption.
The year 1974 became a key point in shifting the ‘expected otherness of the future’ (Kossellek, 1983), at a time when ecological apocalyptical imaginaries were shifting. An abundance of energy was no more, the idea that energy was not finite and the notion of peak oil and the
‘limits to growth’ came into play. Public diversions away from the crisis, that external impacts on the grid did not have widespread and wide-ranging consequences as they had in 1974 meant that during the next Miners’ Strike in 1984, the grid had been altered and developed so that power could be diverted to areas that needed more supply than others (Milne, 2004:
143). This further division of the grid system was not the only breakup of systems that occurred. When read alongside the events of Storm Desmond in 2015, the 1974 case study of the week highlights the shift from corporatism to neoliberalism as not only an economic doctrine, from national to private, but the emphasis on the individual and their role in their own lives.
The case studies of past and present power failure have demonstrated that these shifts are enacted in ways which do not need knowledge of the complexity of the system. The shared infrastructure that existed between 1974 and 2015 saw the home, rather than the state, become a key battleground in responsibility for the issue of energy demand. Social acceptance of new systems is vital to integration of innovation (Fraedrich, Beiker, Lenz, 2015).
171 However, because the systems still look the same physically with visible infrastructure, wires, grids and substations - objects that suggest things are going to plan - the new invisible systems and increased connectivity are not considered until the breakdown of the historical infrastructure.
The shift in organisational structures was a key change in the responses and resilience towards notions of crisis and disruption. The ‘post-war consensus’ that had resulted in the crisis of the consensus shifted decisively with the 1979 election of a Conservative Government under Margaret Thatcher, which favoured the ‘right’ of employers to ‘manage’, with government rolling back state mediation (Mueller and Carter, 2007). The Miners’ Strike of 1974 highlighted the power of the union, and throughout the 1970s, official strikes from various trade unions became a regular feature of everyday life. This cumulated in the winter of 1978/9, often referred to as the ‘Winter of Discontent’. After the 1979 election, the events of the 1970s were considered to be the proof there needed to be a roll back in state mediation. Mueller states that privatisation was responsible for the rise in public relations, challenging the structure and organisation of society through private platforms having an influence on our day to day lives. Where state involvement in everyday and private life had been commonplace in 1974, the shift to a new economic doctrine enabled a private, individualised future of Britain to form.
The complex assemblage of ‘institutions, organizations, and interactions involved in the exercise of political leadership and in the implementation of decisions that are, in principle, collectively binding on its political subjects’ (Jessop, 2016: 16) altered its makeup and presentation. As the next section shows, the rise in PR allowed for futures to be presented in a different way to how they had been during the 1970s. Although it could be suggested that changes occur through the use of innovative methods, a greater emphasis on the present power structures was the driver of change after the disruption.
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