On Electricity

Aside from the occasional bolt of lightning, electricity is something we never see. It’s amazing that such a powerful force is always around us, humming inside the walls of our homes and powering the world we live in. We believe in its strength without ever experiencing that strength firsthand; we know not to touch the third rail or we’ll get fried. So are we ever really capable of feeling electricity? Of comprehending that very strength?

It’s all about how we use it. Even though electricity poses a serious danger to our health, we’ve figured out a way to harness it. It seems like every time something is plugged into a socket there should be an explosion, a near brush with death. But like magic, complex machines come to life without any real action of our own. We tap into a vast current, what must be like irrigation ditches flowing outward from a river.

Where would we be without electricity? Well, we’d probably go to sleep a lot earlier and not know as many people. We’d probably live out our days in a much smaller area of space; so long, modern transportation. Looking back on all the advances in electricity – steam engines, wind generators, dams, fossil fuels, etc. – there seems to be a certain inevitability to the way it unfolded. Of course electricity was discovered! How could it not have been?

Since its conception, electricity has shaped history just as we have shaped it. Is there still potential for something as influential to be discovered? Are we aware of all the forces that surround us? Could there be anything else like it?

It doesn’t seem like a force as large and influential will come along again. With the exception of the computer, an invention, it seems we’re sort of stagnating here on earth. To a large extent, humans have figured out what’s going on, what it is we have to work with. Now, we either get into things that are really small, on the microscopic level and beyond, or things that are really huge, like outer space.

It’s all just the same as always; just one thing after another, the end is the beginning is the end is the beginning. Like words being typed, we’re never quite sure what’s going to come next until it is coming next. It’s easy to ramble when you’re tired and want something to happen; it’s probably best to go to sleep and dream some new dreams. There’s bound to be something that hasn’t been dreamt up yet.