"Then there is electricity! — the demon, the angel, the mighty physical power, the all-pervading intelligence...Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence: or shall we say it is itself a thought, nothing but thought, and no longer the substance which we dreamed it."

-"The House of the Seven Gables," Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851)

“When everything is connected to everything else, for better or for worse, everything matters.”

Bruce Mau, Massive Change

"One might have thought of sight, but who could think

Of what it sees, for all the ill it sees?

Speech found the ear, for all the evil sound,

But the dark italics it could not propound,

And out of what one sees and hears and out

Of what one feels, who could have thought to make

So many selves, so many sensuous worlds,

As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming

With the metaphysical changes that occur

Merely in living as and where we live."

-“Esthétique du Mal," by Wallace Stevens (1944)

Sources: https://old.reddit.com/r/DilettanteryPodcast/comments/p3kou2/125_the_electronic_age_part_1_a_brief_history_of/?

1.25 The Electronic Age Part 1: A Brief History of Electricity and Mcluhan's Thoughts