00:00It has been said, correctly I think, that there is no better symbol of modern progress than the advent of electricity in general, but electric lighting in particular.
00:22The twinkling of cities at night always says to me, look at us as a species. This is what we do.
00:37What's happened over my lifetime is that you have a kind of sprawl with city lights spilling out into the surrounding regions.
00:48Our society is kind of taking over the wilderness.
00:52But it's happening slowly and no one really notices it.
01:00When we add light to the environment, it's an alteration of habitat.
01:11Our society is moving more and more towards a 24-7 lifestyle, and we don't really understand what the low-term health consequences are.
01:18I've seen twice the Milky Way in New York when there's a blackout.
01:26It's so sad because I know what's above me. Once it gets dark here, it just doesn't get dark anymore.
01:35Most human routines make no reference to the cosmos at all. So you might say, why do you need it?
01:46If our civilization didn't see the stars and didn't see how big the universe was, would they come to believe that they're more important in this much tinier universe because that's all they see?
02:00I worry that our lack of contact with the sky is doing something to us that's very subtle. Who knows what the ultimate effect will be?
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