They touched (barely) on this concept in the recent movie The Prestige, which features David Bowie as Nicola Tesla. He lights up a field full of lightbulbs which are not wired to power.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. ... The piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
~ Howard Phillips Lovecraft