Re: [NNagain] A good question - do you know how a toilet works?

[rjmcmahon <rjmcmahon@rjmcmahon.com>]

Some books I found worth reading

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674416833

Eden on the Charles
The Making of Boston
Michael Rawson

Eden on the Charles explores how Bostonians channeled country lakes 
through miles of pipeline to provide clean water; dredged the ocean to 
deepen the harbor; filled tidal flats and covered the peninsula with 
houses, shops, and factories; and created a metropolitan system of parks 
and greenways, facilitating the conversion of fields into suburbs. The 
book shows how, in Boston, different class and ethnic groups brought 
rival ideas of nature and competing visions of a “city upon a hill” to 
the process of urbanization—and were forced to conform their goals to 
the realities of Boston’s distinctive natural setting. The outcomes of 
their battles for control over the city’s development were ultimately 
recorded in the very fabric of Boston itself. In Boston’s history, we 
find the seeds of the environmental relationships that—for better or 
worse—have defined urban America to this day.

https://upittpress.org/books/9780822961475/#:~:text=Jacobson's%20Ties%20That%20Bind%20is,the%20course%20of%20two%20centuries.

Ties That Bind
By Charles Jacobson

In the early days of utility development, municipalities sought to shape 
the new systems in a variety of ways even as private firms struggled to 
retain control and fend off competition. In scope and consequence, some 
of the battles dwarfed the contemporary one between local jurisdictions 
and cable companies over broadband access to the Internet. In this 
comparative historical study, Jacobson draws upon economic theory to 
shed light on relationships between technology, market forces, and 
problems of governance that have arisen in connection with different 
utility networks over the past two hundred years. He focuses on water, 
electric, and cable television utility networks and on experiences in 
four major American cities — Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, and 
Pittsburgh, arguing that information and transactions costs have played 
decisive roles in determining how different ownership and regulatory 
arrangements have functioned in different situations.Using primary 
sources and bold conceptualizations, Jacobson begins his study by 
examining the creation of centralized water systems in the first half of 
the nineteenth century, moves to the building of electric utilities from 
the 1880s to the 1980s, and concludes with an analysis of cable 
television franchising from the 1960s to the 1980s. Ties That Bind 
addresses highly practical questions of how to make ownership, 
regulatory, and contracting arrangements work better and also explores 
broader concerns about private monopoly and the role of government in 
society.

Bob
> Sometimes I liken this debate about the internet, to 1906-era
> partisans arguing about the right cures for syphilis. One side,
> intoning with great authority: "Tinctures of mercury, yes a good dose
> of mercury, is just what you need... " and the other side, insisting
> that "Leeches, leeches will help... all you need is a  good
> blood-letting... and everything will be fine..."
> 
> While those few that had embraced germ theory and were pointing at
> little squiggly things in microscopes as the root causes of so much
> disease, were laughed at and ignored.
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