James Gleick, The information. A history, a theory, a flood

The social consequences could not have been predicted, but some were observed and appreciated almost immediately. People’s sense of the weather began to change -weather, that is, as a generalization, an abstraction.

“…The telegraph enabled people to think of weather as a widespread and interconnected affair, rather than an assortement of local surprises.” The phenomena of the atmosphere, the mysteries of meteors, the cause and effect of skiey combinations, are no longer matters of superstition or of panic to the husbandman, the sailor or the shepherd,”