Our gaze falls on a simple picture of an ordinary apartment. A cozy living room, a small kitchen, and a room that’s been put together in a somewhat odd way—a mix of bathroom, storage room, and hobby room. The text begins with this paragraph:

It’s eight o’clock. The apartment is quiet, except for the music playing softly from the speaker. It’s a playlist your boyfriend put together for you years ago. You send him a text to ask how he’s doing, then pick up a book, turn on the lamp, and settle into the armchair to read.

It sounds like a cozy evening after a long day at work. But upon closer inspection, none of these gestures or objects we hold in our hands can be taken for granted. Just a few decades ago, a book, music, a text message, a lamp, and a warm room were considered impossible and unattainable luxuries. As we let our gaze wander further through the apartment, we notice the refrigerator, the sink and the washbasin with hot and cold water, the washing machine, the bicycle, the large window with double-paned glass, the air conditioner, the sewing machine, the fruits and spices in the kitchen, the medications in the medicine cabinet, the eyeglass lenses, and the framed photo.

Ordinary Abundance, as the website is called, opens with a view of this apartment. With each scroll, the focus shifts to an object inside, and a quote from the past appears—in which a writer, politician, scientist, or other prominent figure reflected on how unattainable or expensive such an object would be.

In 1888, Edward Bellamy wrote the following about music in his science fiction novella Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887:

If we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained.

Back then, the only way to enjoy music was to make it yourself—by playing an instrument or attending a concert. The idea of being able to listen to music anytime, anywhere, at the touch of a button, and having hundreds of millions of songs at your disposal was unimaginable in 1888 and bordered on a miracle.

It was just as much of a miracle to have light anytime, anywhere, without fire, smoke, or soot. An eyewitness in Wabash, Indiana, in 1880 raved about it:

The people, almost with bated breath, stood overwhelmed with awe, as if in the presence of the supernatural. The strange, weird light, exceeded in power only by the sun, yet mild as moonlight, rendered the Court House square as light as midday.

On the night described in the eyewitness account, Wabash, in the U.S. state of Indiana, became one of the first cities to be fully lit by electric light. Candles, oil lamps, and gas flames provided only relatively dim light and, moreover, were all smoldering open fires inside homes.

Ordinary Abundance explores nearly two dozen household items that were once out of reach. Some had not yet been invented; others were too rare or too expensive for the vast majority of people. Today, most of us who are fortunate enough to live with them walk right past them without giving them a second thought.

Yet at the same time, we passionately debate how much humanity is losing its humanity because of these technologies. Yet this discussion wouldn’t even be possible without technology, because it is technology that frees us from having to spend most of our time procuring and preparing food, finding and defending a shelter that protects us from the elements and predators, and would have prevented us from even reaching old age—let alone reaching it healthy and alert enough to discuss the downsides of technology for humanity.

People don’t notice when something is taken for granted—they only realize it when what they took for granted and were used to is suddenly gone. Scroll through the Ordinary Abundance website yourself and rediscover the technologies we take for granted.