Question

how electric technology is a boon for humanity

Answer 1

Imagine the middle ages when one did not have electricity and had to depend on oil lamps etc in order to be active during the night.Even now, rural India is in this benighted state in many states and one has to only witness the life of people in these places to become aware of how electricity has helped mankind.Add to this travails of a person who has to fan himself with a palm leaf during a hot day to realisehow the electric fan and the air conditioner has made life more comfotrtable for all.The rising cost of energy or the inability to harness pollution free sources of energy such as solar energy or even the bad effects of atomic energy does not justify one's cribbing about the evils of modern science.Electricity was not known until about three centuries ago when the flash of a lightning caused Benjamin Franklin to wonder about it and trace it to the discharge of electric charges across the moist air in the atmosphere.At around the same time the famous Leyden Jar was developed and a way had been found to produce electricity through the passage of positive and negative ions through an electrolyte in a battery orelectrochemical cell.Soon capacitors were found in which electricity could be stored and used when needed.Joule discovered theheating effect of an electric current when it passes through a material which resists the flow of electricity.Faraday and Oersted found the magnetic effect of an electric current and also the current induced when a conductor is moved across a region in which there is magnetic field.This led to the development of dynamos which generate electricity and motors which rotate when a current is passed.The lighting effect of a current carrying conductor which is heated to incandescence or a discharge tube was another significant development.For transmitting electricity in large volume across longdistances one uses transmission lines, cables and ceramic insulators.Similarly switches to turn the current on or off and relays,voltmeters, ammeters,power meters,transformers for alternating current, rectifiers to convert ac into dc voltages, solid state batteries,fuses and other protecting devices were discovered so that electrical engineering developed into a full fledged discipline and the phenomenon of electricity could be harnessed and used in minute as well as very large quantities.Truly the discovery of various phenomena related to electricity and the invention of electrical instruments and devices represent a major revolution in the history of mankind in its march towards modernization and a comfortable, high quality life.I will discuss the 'spiritual'(as opposed to materialistic)implications of these discoveries and inventions separately.