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06516_Field_TCUM T81.txt
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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