According to Wikipedia, hydro power was in use for some time, but electricity was relatively new. The generator opened in 1881, just two short years before this was written.

Not enough time for its full usefulness to be seen directly, but plenty to stoke the imagination.

Living during the advent of electric power must have been a fun time. So much that was impossible was now possible, a big door just opened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Falls#Hydroelectric_po...

For context, Cragside[1] in the Northeast of the UK was the first electrified house in the world, and was powered by hydro, that was in 1870, it got incandescent light bulbs in 1880, so this is definitely forward looking.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cragside

It was even more fun to live during the advent of the information superhighway :)

Indeed — but what is the next big one? Maybe AGI?

Assuming AGI is possible at all,which, the theory says, is undecided conjecture.

As someone with a physics background, I'm struggling to think of a theory under which AGI is impossible. We have an existence proof for GI, and no evidence from neurology of structures so unique that we could not build an analog of them.

Yes, I don't see why AGI would be impossible. All you need is Turing completeness, and a workable approach, right?

Still, coming up with a workable approach could be very difficult. We and other animals are the only existence proof. And that's all based on a billion years or more of ~random variation and selection. So it'll likely be way overcomplicated and inelegant.

... which will also be the last big one...

That depends on how you look at it. From the perspective of meat machines, sure. But from the perspective of general intelligences, which have some ancestry in meat machines, not at all. Just something that happened way back when. Like electrical engineering.