My father used tell me a story of an old lady, Mary Dwyer. Mary’s house got ‘the electric’ during rural electrification in the 1930’s. Asked how she found electricity Mary declared it to be a wonderful invention. As it got dark in the evening she could turn on the light in her living room, then she could easily find the candles and light them before turning the light off again.
Much like Mary we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the power and potential of our technical tools. For the first twenty years electricity was only used to power light bulbs. Then the electric motor was invented. And life changed.
Image via Brian Herzog on Flickr