Analyze

As outlined in this brief article by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, energy consumption by New York City alone has dropped significantly more than the surrounding areas. On a prima-facie observation, one could say the foregoing alleviates stress on the existing energy infrastructures. However, deeper analyses should consider the repercussions that demanding less energy may have on production, supply, and distribution, as well as transitions between larger and smaller electric microgrids. Given energy infrastructures in the United States are already vulnerable, can it be really said the pandemic alleviates stress on the existing energy infrastructures when everybody is connected to the internet and is generally using more technology at home?

"Infrastructure is material (roads, pipes, sewers, and grids); it is social (institutions, economic systems, and media forms); and it is philosophical (intellectual trajectories: dreamt up by human ingenuity and nailed down in concrete forms). Infrastructure has a capaciousness and scope that makes it both an infinitely useful concept and a concept that is open to facile misinterpretation or to being encumbered by overuse."

Infrastructure as paradox

• Infrastructures, paradoxically, both mitigate and magnify precarity in the Anthropocene.

• The overtly human-centered orientation of infrastructure led us to our third paradox: the purpose of infrastructure is to mitigate risk, yet it also introduces new risks.