Unplug the TV and refrigerator.
Get rid of all the electric devices. Dump all the packaged food and start growing your own. Toss the store-bought soaps and shampoos. Chop some wood for the fireplace so you can cook and stay warm. Forget about school from now on: You’re working dawn to dusk.
Do all that and you’ll see how most people lived before the Industrial Revolution. This period, which stretched from roughly 1760 to 1860, got its name from a series of changes in machinery and ideas. Those changes were gradual but radical, and they expanded the world’s productive power. That allowed people to create more clothes, more gadgets, more everything.
The biggest change caused by the Industrial Revolution was in the speed of change itself. A slow-moving, low-tech world disappeared. It was replaced by a world where people craved new things, expected miracle drugs, and planned to do better than their parents had. In other words, the Industrial Revolution created modern life.
