Anti-electricity cartoon from 1889.
Electricity is portrayed as a spider with a cobweb of electrical wires for trapping its human victims.
Also features the mandatory skull, dead horse, and a mother with a child killed by the daemon.
@kravietz Keep in mind that the stuff was a) pretty dangerous at the time and b) safety measures and knowledge were at best primitive.
Not that you couldn't die from plenty else as well.
Institutional resistance was also likely high.
Absolutely yes — the poster was actually based on a tragic accident of an electrician electrocuted (the person hanging on the wires).
The problem with the poster is however that's it's not a safety warning, but a portrayal of new technology as an absolute evil that cannot be controlled, that appeals to lowest emotions and instincts.
@kravietz Resistance to technological innovation goes back a ways.
See "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations (1937)"
https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/page/39
Berhnard J. Stern's student research assistant would talk of this work later. He went on to use concepts in his own writing. You may have heard of Isaac Asimov.
I've retyped the document in Markdown, available for reading here:
https://rentry.co/szi3g
#BernhardJStern #ResistancesToTechnologicalInnovation #Technology #Luddism #IsaacAsimov
This article is so awesome! 😂
> The wide use of electric locomotives has been delayed because of capital loss on old equipment
One of the England's busiest lines (GWR) was electrified only in... 2019! 🤦♂️
@kravietz @dredmorbius "capital loss" will be a *major* consideration in the sustainability transition. Central banks have taken an active interest in how sustainable private bank balance sheets not because of particularly green fingers but to have visibility on financial system risks...
@openrisk Stranded assets in the form of both mineral reserves (coal, oil, gas) and fossil-fuel infrastructure will be absolutely immense.
It's not just the assets themselves, but everything that's supported by them through the financial system, as well as political power accruing through that.
(This alone may account for a huge amount of Russia's beligerance in recent years.)
But even Germany - which is undoubtedly the country most depending on Russian gas in Europe - electrified their railways decades ago. UK was certainly an outlier in Europe in this aspect (as it is in many others).
I have read many analyses on that particular subject as I was travelling on GWR almost daily back then and seeing these huge diesel locomotives on one of the UK's busiest lines in late 2010's was quite shocking TBH.
