Dispatches from rural Oklahoma: No juice, no genius

When the power goes out, today's connected world comes to a stop

I remember the first time the power went out during school. I was halfway through a page of home row exercises in typing class, trying not to smudge the correction tape. The hum of the blue IBM Selectrics stopped all at once, like somebody had hit the brakes on the whole building.

Without power, the room just sort of exhaled. The clock on the wall gave up, the projector died mid-flicker and we all looked around like it was Christmas morning. No typing meant no work that day. Somebody tried to start a paper airplane contest. Someone else opened a window even though it was February. The teachers sighed and told us to go back to our seats and read (yes, in the dark!).

Back then, the lights going out didn’t end the day. It just gave it a twist.

These days, when the power cuts out at a school, it doesn’t just change the lesson plan; it cancels it. If the Wi-Fi’s down, half the textbooks are inaccessible. No online classroom, no attendance system, no research. And when the tablets die, that’s it. You can’t very well sharpen a Chromebook and write in cursive.

We used to talk about power in metaphor. Now it’s literal. Without electricity, school doesn’t limp — it quits.

Which is why I’ve found myself thinking more about our rural electric co-ops than the shiny new tech that’s coming down the pike. Artificial intelligence, smart classrooms, cloud-based learning? Sure, all of that might be the future. But it only works if someone keeps the lights on.

Our co-op’s lineworkers are out there fixing downed lines and greasing the gears. They’re the ones up a pole at 3 a.m. after a lightning storm, trying to get power back to the junior high so kids can submit their algebra homework on time. No fanfare. No slogan. Just boots, belts and a little bit of grit.

AI is already showing up in schools, even if most folks don’t call it that. It’s helping teachers sort papers, personalize lessons and offer help at hours when no one’s in the building. For some kids, it might even be a source of tutoring.

It doesn’t stop at the school doors, either. Farmers use AI to check irrigation patterns, detect crop issues and manage herds. Rural clinics rely on it to run diagnostics and support telehealth. And every single byte of it needs electricity.

So, while we chase the big dreams — robot tractors, digital classrooms, instant access — we’d do well to remember that the people keeping those dreams alive wear work gloves, hard hats and drive bucket trucks.

If we want rural kids to compete with the rest of the world, they need a strong signal and a strong circuit. Because no matter how smart the tech gets, it’s still dumb without power.