relevant to our electric world. Electricity does not centralize, but 
decentralizes. It is like the difference between a railway system 
and an electric grid system: the one requires rail-heads and big 
urban centres. Electric power, equally available in the 
farmhouse and the Executive Suite, permits any place to be a 
centre, and does not require large aggregations. This reverse 
pattern appeared quite early in electrical “labor-saving” devices, 
whether a toaster or washing machine or vacuum cleaner. 
Instead of saving work, these devices permit everybody to do 
his own work. What the nineteenth century had delegated to 
servants and housemaids we now do for ourselves. This 
principle applies in toto  in the electric age. In politics, it permits 
Castro to exist as independent nucleus or centre. It would 
permit Quebec to leave the Canadian union in a way quite 
inconceivable under the regime of the railways. The railways 
require a uniform political and economic space. On the other