“The Machine Stops” shows us a highly developed mechanical era where humans live in the small, underground rooms with all kinds of buttons and switches to meet their life demands. People use the visual “round plate” (1) to communicate with each other and get engaged in social activities. Illness would be cured by medical machines while long-distance trip would be easily managed by giant airships… Machines become the dominant role of humans’ life. Meanwhile, humans also get used to living with the machines, however, feel strange to directly interact with each other.
This is a contradictory and ironic civilization, human beings create the machines, however, worship these machines as if they were gods. Humans are gradually blinded to the real world, deprived their living ability and eventually become a foolish slave to the machine system. As a result, when the machines stop operating in the end, human society is stuck in disorder and panic.
Though this story is written down 100 years ago, the situation it described still shares a lot of similarities with our life nowadays: video chat, the automatical machine system, online communication taking place of face-to-face talk…Just like Kuno says “its hum penetrates our blood, and may even guide our thoughts” (13). It is also the time for us to think about the relationship between humanity and machine in our life: does our mind truly follow the technology? Should we set an ethical line for the development of the technology?