Evolutionary biologists believe that human lighting preferences are the result of our trichromatic vision—rare in nonprimates—which makes us particularly suited to daylight and the perception of primary colors. There’s an anthropological component as well: For 400,000 years, humankind has been banishing darkness with fire. And Edison’s bulb is, at its core, a burning filament that casts the glow of a flame. Abandoning incandescent bulbs means abandoning fire as our primary light source for the first time in human history.

cubicle lightsThese lines from Dan Koeppel’s article in Wired magazine, “The Future of Light Is the LED,” nails it. His explanation captures people’s — frankly, my — aversion to the horrible, cold light of compact fluorescent bulbs and the ritual cringe many of us experience each morning when our colleagues turn on the overhead tubes of life-sucking energy hovering above our cubevilles with a perky, “Let’s get some light in here!”

Photo by Daniel Parks/Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

~Trent Gilliss, senior editor

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