Unplug the TV and refrigerator.
Toss out all your electric toys and tools. Dump all the packaged food and start planting seeds. Chuck 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.
Think you could do all that? You’d see how most people lived before the Industrial Revolution. This period stretched from roughly 1760 to 1860. It got its name from a series of slow but big changes in machinery and ideas. They increased 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 went away. It was replaced by a world where people wanted new things and expected miracle drugs. Everyone planned to do better than their parents had. In other words, the Industrial Revolution created modern life.
