Home Improvement

Truthfully, in the interest of public order I very rarely sing the body electric, or anything else for that matter — I don’t have the voice for it.

But I do love electricity. Can you imagine what life would be like without it? First of all, I wouldn’t be writing this essay on my computer, and you wouldn’t be reading it on your computer either. In other words, the world of instant communication which we take for granted, and which we are so in love with, could not exist without electricity. Not so long ago people either communicated with one another on the telephone, or wrote letters, books, or articles in newspapers. Without the computers then I would have had to write this essay the old fashioned way, on a manual typewriter, or with a pen and paper. And how would you read it?

Well, you’d probably have to buy a magazine or newspaper in which it was published. But without electricity, publishing itself becomes a tedious endeavor. Of course magazines and newspapers existed before electricity, but they were certainly not so wide spread and accessible like they are today. There is no question that electricity has changed how we communicate in a way that can be described as revolutionary.

What else do I love about electricity? Artificial lighting has freed me to go to sleep and wake up at whatever hour I want to, without worrying about candles, oil lamps and other difficult and inconvenient ways to light up the darkness. When streets and roads are well lit they are safer. This opens the world of evening activities to more people and for longer hours. Which brings me to a mind-boggling subject when it comes to the way electricity has changed our lives, and that is personal entertainment.

The number of ways people entertain themselves has taken a quantum leap because of electricity. Of course there are movies, which are one of the oldest electricity-dependent forms of entertainment, but the recent explosion in the number of stay-at-home forms of entertainment we have now is really amazing. Not everyone agrees, however, that this situation is good. Some people complain that our society has entered a type of cocooning style, where each person or family isolates themselves, like in a cocoon, away from the community which used to go to movies, theater, concerts, and other types of communal forms of entertainment, together.

When people are watching YouTube, or listening to music on their MP3s, or watching a movie on their iPods, they are missing something essential that you receive when people experience cultural events together as part of a greater society. Even if this is true, I would say that for most people in the past, concerts, opera and theater were out of reach anyway, whether because of financial restrictions or distance to the center of the city in order to take part. Today, entertainment is accessible to anyone and everyone. It is cheap and convenient. And there is still the option of going out to a live performance if you want to.

This is just the beginning of what could be an entire book about the ways electricity has changed our lives in what I believe is ultimately a positive way. I love reading books about the days before electricity, like Little House on the Prairie, or Anne of Green Gables, but overall I am glad I live in this era of convenience, health and prosperity, a lot of which is a result of our harnessing of electricity.