Electrification to Digitalization

Article: Bodies Electric Aeon

In 1900, to celebrate the exposition of Universelle which was held in Paris, people were asked to think about 2000 and they came up with lot of ideas. Out of them a group of school boys came up with a interesting idea. They imagined that in the year 2000 electricity would be used to inject the knowledge directly into our brain. And a similar thing was proved in the year 2016. 

Today we see a lot of electronic gadgets which electrically simulate exercise to our body. Technologies like these are not new but they are as old as the 19th century.

In the earlier days many "electrical" doctors came up with a lot of treatments to medical and psychological ailments using electricity. Although these treatments more of experimental, they were successful in penetrating the idea of treatment using electricity in the minds of public especially the Victorians.

Electrical Telegraph which was a revolutionary tool for communication, helped people a lot in understanding, how electricity is connected to the human body and its treatments. They assumed brain as the Telegraph and the nerves as the wires which was further used in the communication.These Victorian people also enjoyed the so called electro-gymnastic apparatus.

Electricity was the future.

They also believed that our minds can communicate with each other in a medium like ether. Extending life time was also a solution that was expected from electricity.

Till today electricity has embedded in our minds and words. For instance we get shocked. We still think ourselves as electric bodies.

Author concludes, with a statement stating that we think our brain as a computer that runs lot of algorithms to come to conclusion, where he/she draws a connection between electricity and digitalization and ends the passage.

My opinion: This passage revolved around electricity and how people conceived the future of electricity. Author also mentions about the biopsy with electricity during 1800's. 

I personally liked few last paragraphs, when author talks about the conceiving ourselves as electric bodies and modelling ourselves on technology. Today we conceive our brains as computers which run algorithms that tell us what to do. And this is the reason why I have titled this post "Electrification to Digitalization".

You can read the passage from here: Bodies Electric Aeon