A new technology is not an outside force that strikes society and has an "impact"; it grows inside a society and is shaped by it. Its spread is a series of choices made only partly on technical grounds, so the same invention can unfold differently in different times and cultures. Homes, factories and cities are not passive objects that get transformed; people decide how to use the new thing.
Given the option, people chose to own their machines rather than share collective services. They preferred suburban homes with their own appliances to city living with shared electrical services, the car to the electric streetcar, and the home washing machine to the commercial laundry. What technology makes possible does not decide which form wins; taste for individual ownership does.
A basic power source matters less as a substitute for what came before than for the new settings it makes possible. Electric light was not just better gaslight; together with electric power it created the streetcar suburb, the department store, the amusement park, the assembly-line factory and the modern farm. Its importance lies in what it lets other things become.
People slide from seeing a new technology as a technical change to using it as a symbol of novelty, excitement and being modern. Anything electric came to mean high energy, so people admired "live wires" and "electrifying performances," and speed and intensity became prized values. The technology also became something to look at and enjoy, with lit-up night streets and streetcar rides turned into tourism, painting and poetry.
When electric motors let factories be redesigned from scratch in size and layout, control shifted too. Decisions that once sat on the shop floor moved into the hands of managers. Changing how energy is delivered inside a workplace can change who runs it.