Written by E.M. Forster 110 years ago, the language of the novel seems rigid and out-dated, yet the ideas are in such consonance of the age that we are in. We are now marching into the age of the machines, and the prophecies Forster made are slowly turning real.
One significant change the machine brought to the human race was the lost of sensibility through physical contacts. Forster mentioned in this article: “People are losing the concept of space.” It seems ludicrous at first that people would resign their life to a white little cell, mislead by the idea that in this little cell they can get limitless contacts with the outside world, thus satisfied with replacing the real world with one that is purely artificial. But think of how much time people are now spending on the internet every day, how adolescents are viewing the world through influencers, or how little contact we have now with the nature compared to our ancestors, I can see the metamorphosis happening. We are getting comfortable with the replacement of real contacts, when chatting online is so much easier and has such a wide reach. We are getting used to seeing pictures of mountains and rivers that the real thing cannot raise the excitement or reverence that our ancestors so long have felt. We have, to an extent, made the machine part of ourselves and let it slowly eaten away the sensations that belong to us. We thought we could exploit it without getting infected, but the infections happened before we know it.
For my part, this article inspired me to get real contacts and use my sensations. The tool should always remain only the tool, not the master.