Week 1 : Response to “The Machine Stops” E.M. Forster – Matthew Fertig

I’ve always found the idea of ‘the future’ to be intriguing. How there is nothing we can certainly say about what the future will be or look like, but can still predict certain things to a pretty high degree. Thus, Forster’s work naturally intrigued me. Many authors and artists throughout history have done their take on the future, almost always including idealistic or dystopian technologies beyond current comprehension. Forster’s work hits home more so than others because of just how much accuracy he has. While we are not, or may think we’re not, reliant on some all-knowing machine, we’re definitely more alike than not alike Forster’s future. It’s commonly known that companies and governments receive intel from our activity on computers and use this knowledge to further their cause in some way. Retail companies can use your browsing history to introduce you to a similar product, for example, or phone companies can recommend accessories because they know you bought a particular phone model. So much of our society today is based around technology and others doing things for us. We hear it all the time but technology is slowly taking more and more away from human interaction and deepening our reliance on devices to do our work for us. I found it interesting how throughout Forster’s writing he frequently prefaced sentences with “of course,” revealing the bizarre realities of his society to be common knowledge. While at first it struck me as odd to continuously have to prove what he says to be obvious, that in and of itself is a truth about technology today: things we’ve become so use to, we almost can’t imagine a world without.

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