Scared of the Dark
I like to get to the office early. This gives me time to get things done before anyone else comes in and starts to bother me. Sure, sometimes I’m posting stuff, but in general it’s a great jump start to the day.
One of the side benefits of this is that no one else has arrived before me and turned on the general overhead lighting. In my office this is about 15 overhead pendulum lights with about 4 10 million watt fluorescent bulbs in them. Basically it seems like stadium lighting. I’m sitting here this morning, and the lights are off, or at least as off as they get; when they are off there are two or three of the individual bulbs that remain lit for security lighting or something (as if the motion sensors of the alarm system needed light to work). There I sit happily in the dark, when someone else comes in. I know what is going to happen, but I still don’t like it. I hear the snapping of the switches, one by one, and then the angry buzz from the lights. Slowly they ramp up to full intensity, and I begin to type up this post.
Here is the question of the day:
Why do we need general overhead lighting everywhere?
What is the purpose of lighting up an entire office with overhead stadium lights when all you need would be the light provided by your computers LCD screen. Or, if you need more than that, why not a small white LED? Those suckers throw off some bright light, and won’t bother others. Not all of us feel that we need to have the entire area around us illuminated to work. This would not necessarily apply to all work situations, but I bet it applies in almost all offices.
My theories are:
- Ever since the light bulb was invented, we have considered it such a huge leap forward that we feel the need to constantly bathe ourselves in artificial light produced from electricity to show those monkeys and other lower forms of life who is the man.
- Since everyone who was not already alive since the invention of electricity and the light bulb has been raised with the luxury of cheap and available energy at the flick of a switch, we take it for granted and eventually develop the need for it.
- It’s scary in the dark. Or at lease the power companies want you to feel uncomfortable in the dark, if you don’t turn on a light how are they going to make any money?
First you should know that I’m not an environmentalist as such. I am pro-earth, and pro-living things in general and I think it’s a really good idea to come up with ways to extend the consumable resources we have at our disposal, but not at the sacrifice of my personal convenience or comfort. This means that I like air conditioning, internal combustion engines that run on gas, and so on, but that is not an excuse to waste it. The same goes for coal to light the sun simulators hanging from my office ceiling.
Second, I’m not trying to start a crusade against general overhead lighting. It just seems that in these days of awareness that we have a finite quantity of consumable resources that we use to fuel our modern world it would be smart and efficient to douse the overhead lights in favor of more specific task oriented lighting. The side benefit would be a tremendous savings of electricity as I’m sure that lighting up a few dozen task lights at peoples workspaces would use less power than firing up sixty overhead lights.
So why don’t we do it? I suppose it will take some law to be passed before common sense will prevail. I’m sure that most people would enjoy having more light provided by their own task light rather than the harsh general overhead lighting. And this isn’t even getting to the point that the overhead lighting is useless once the sun comes up, unless you don’t have any external windows in your workplace.
So the next time that you come into work early, and you are one of those people who likes to turn on all the lights, try to avoid the urge to turn them on and just see if there isn’t enough light around already. If there isn’t, get a small light for your workspace and try that.
I bet you’ll like it!
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I agree and they’ve got the kids already hooked on it. No matter the time of day in my house whenever a kid enters any room there’s an involuntary muscle action that causes their hand to instinctively flip on the light switch. Strangely enough this same involuntary action is not present when they exit the room. I spend half my time at home turning off lights.