This morning, at 1:17 AM, the power failed at my house. I’m a geek, so a power failure at my house might look different than it does at yours. Emergency lighting automatically switched on. The alarm system notified the central monitoring station in Ojai, which sent a text message to my phone. The soft but incessant beeping of UPS systems upstairs and down reminded me that nonessential systems had been shut down while Internet and telephone had been...