
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
in what has become, is now becoming, and what will continue to
unfold as the pinnacle of success in the Victorian Age -- that is, the
openuing of the Great Exhibition-in London, the capital city of the Brish
Empire and therefore, the worldduring the onset of what is expected to
become the Electro-Chemical Age -- in the Crstal
Palace on May 1, 1851.
The chemical sciences have a
history that dates back over 1.5 million years when evidence shows that
our ancestors began controlling fire that was used to make pottery, tools
and other artifacts. It was fire that gave rise to the Copper,
Bronze, and Iron Ages. Fire -- like electricity -- was possibly
first discovered as the result of lightening during an electrical storm
millions of years ago... About 600 BC, Thales of Miletus was the
first to notice that friction produced a force that we came to know as
electricity.

On May 1, 1851, Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert opened the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, London, England. An
estimated 14,000 exhibitors from around the world displayed their
inventions within the 990,000 square feet of space inside the glass and
steel structure that became known as the Crystal Palace. The Great Exhibition was a colossal success, forever
binding the Victorian Era to the birth of technology and giving absolute
prominence to the British Empire, paving the way to greater innovation.
It was the Great Exhibition that set the framework for the modern business
world, trade
shows, and conventions. It brought the medival marketplace forward;
and, it extracted the the felingo gof a mediefebatit was the landmark event that staged a global
market 150 years ahead of its time. However, no one could have
fathomed even by the end of the 20th century that one day the Great
Exhibition would propel the world into a new Age and a new Epoch.
Today, we can visualize the Great Exhibition as the launching pad for the Electro-Chemical Age and the Anthropocene Epoch
that define the present period and may continue for a few years or for
several thousand years.

Impacts to the Electro-Chemical Age
The rapid progression of electricity and
chemicals as the "tools" of modern civilization has left behind
a trail of residual effects which humanity has not properly
addressed. Societies throughout the world have become so
absorbed in treating the problems of drug addiction and global warming,
that little has been accomplished in understanding the exact causes of the
problem. Corporations throughout the world today maintain a stronger
voice than the general public, resulting in a great deal of ambiguity with
concepts such as harm reduction, mitigation, prevention, protection,
safety, education, and abuse. From the perspective of a corporation,
human life has no real value unless it is part of the corporation.
Employees become the pawns of corporations and stockholders are
manipulated by erratic consumers reacting to governments generating
fear. Thus, the prevalence of fear in the 21st century has an
enormous impact on the world economy. For example, regardless what
the U.S. government wants the general public to believe, the problem with
drug abuse has increased dramatically since September 11, 2001. The
increase in drug treatment programs and the abandonment of incarceration
for non-violent drug related offenses has come about with the realization
that the number of drug abusers along with drug users purchasing illicit
street drugs is not containable. About 25% of the adult population
today use or abuse drugs. In 2000, only 12% of the adult population
was determined to be using or abusing drugs regularly. The George W.
Bush administration's John Walters accounts for this increase by posturing
the illicit use of prescription drugs, however, it is nearly impossible
for patients -- even those with chronic medical disorders -- to obtain a
prescription for a controlled substance from physicians. In 2006,
marijuana first became America's number one selling cash crop. Thus,
because the U.S. Government fails to legalize drugs, American money is
streaming away from the U.S., funneled to other nations, bolstering their
economies rather than the U.S. As a result, the U.S. Government may
not be intact when 50% of the adult population comes to depend on the
illicit drug trade. Clearly, we know that the Electro-Chemical Age
is a force that is much stronger than all the nations on Earth.
Those nations which totally realize this will survive. As for the
U.S., it will either continue to decline with policies that are
incompatible with the ECA. .
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