The Machine Stops

"Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds."

During the first week of February, Marc and I read E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" a short work of science fiction from 1909 that imagines a future in which humans now live in isolation, each individual buried away in their own room. Not by force, there are no locks in Forster's techno-dystopia. But, why bother moving when everything can be brought to you by the touch of a button? Food, music, medicine, the voice and image of a friend or child half-way across the Earth. What Forster describes resembles our present much too closely for comfort, even if our detachment from nature is not so complete and perhaps can never be. Still, the droning of Forster's all-encompassing Machine echoes the droning of the voracious data centers mushrooming all over the globe. And even more, Forster is able to foresee the development of a parasitic tech-human relationship, in which technology is no longer a tool to foster connections, improve efficiency, or obtain knowledge. No, to perpetuate itself, the Machine depends on people being incapable of independent decision-making and action. It actively fosters dependencies that leave humans at the mercy of the functioning of a technology they are no longer capable of understanding, nor fixing once it begins to break down.

We collected some of our favorite quotes from the text, which speak to the malaise felt now by many in the face of numerous efforts to convince us to outsource critical thought and responsibilities, which in turn lessens our capacity to make informed and meaningful decisions.

"For a moment Vashti felt lonely. Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere--buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. [...] There was the button that produced literature, and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world."

"She made the room dark and slept; she awoke and made the room light; she ate and exchanged ideas with her friends, and listened to music and attended lectures; she make the room dark and slept. Above her, beneath her, and around her, the Machine hummed eternally; she did not notice the noise, for she had been born with it in her ears. The earth, carrying her, hummed as it sped through silence, turning her now to the invisible sun, now to the invisible stars. She awoke and made the room light."

"Here I am. I have had the most terrible journey and greatly retarded the development of my soul. It is not worth it, Kuno, it is not worth it. My time is too precious. The sunlight almost touched me, and I have met with the rudest people. I can only stop a few minutes. Say what you want to say, and then I must return."

"I am most advanced. I don't think you irreligious, for there is no such thing as religion left. All the fear and superstition that existed once have been destroyed by the Machine."

"Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives in the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it."

"To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress. No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. [...] But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over−reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine."

- Andrea & Marc