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.
Week 1: Response to “The Machine Stops” E.M. Foerster – Lily Deng
I can’t help but feel mesmerized when reading Foerster’s “The Machine Stops”. This story vividly insinuates the dependence of people on technology in a dark and sarcastic way, with an interesting conversation between Kuno and Vashti. After finishing this reading, I remembered a saying that’ the furthest distance in the world is that we are together materially, yet we are both absorbed in our cell phones as if we were apart. Inevitably, a great preponderance of people are too addicted to technology that they have lost the abilities of real-life communication in one way or another. At the same time, they blame technology for manipulating them. However, it is not technology’s fault but theirs. The way they rely on tech to a great extent is inappropriate. I am looking forward to reading such fascinating passages next time!
Response to EM Forster – Catt Kim
I think the general gist of the short story we read for class will be discussed quite often in these blog posts, so I’ll go straight into some parts I found particularly interesting or note worthy.
First, about the noise from the machine on page 8, Vashti “did not notice the noise, for she had been born with it in her ears.” I thought this was quite an interesting detail because it shows the influence of normality. If you’re born x way and everyone around you accepts that as normal, you don’t know any better. I think there are actually few aspects that humans will innately be repulsed by- a lot of what we consider socially acceptable is just that- social norms that have been ingrained into us as acceptable. This idea obviously extends past just the tangible noise and into the way society took place in the machine; the isolation, the selfishness, the parental abandonment, etc. This phenomenon is actually visible in today’s world, as well, in cultural difference. Things that are taken as just the way things are- ie tan skin being beautiful in the west and highly desired, are not perceived in the same way in other places, but to each group of people their way of thinking seems perfectly logical and reasonable.
The next quote I found interesting was when Vashti says that if Kuno “did not die to-day he would die to-morrow. There was not room for such a person in the world” on page 14. This brought to mind the idea of being “incompatible with human life.” I heard this term in a medical context, regarding unborn babies who had ailments that would make them unable to live past a few days, or at all. However, I think that on a much less extreme scale this can also be applied to people who simply do not fit in with society. While I’m not saying that they should or would die like Vashti says, it could make their lives either increasingly difficult or lonely.
Lastly, I wanted to talk about the idea of religion presented. When Vashti says that “‘The Machine has been most merciful,'” Kuno replies with “‘I prefer the mercy of God'” (17). However, I think it’s an interesting juxtaposition that while religion as we know it was such a radical idea in the story, it’s now quite traditional, and there are many people who find the idea of God ridiculous. And a similar idea can be found when The Machine reinstates religion, but it’s only The Book of the Machine, which is basically just an instruction manual for the contraption they live in. While that detail increases the satiric and dsytopian nature of the story, some view the current state of religion as just as repressing, strict, and crazy as we view The Machine. I suppose it’s just interesting to see the way that society changes.
Response to E.M. Forster—Angel Yang
“The Machine Stops” is a novel which mainly describes the possible consequences of extreme industrialization. Machines take complete control of life. People live underground and interact with each other entirely electronically. One day the machine stopped working and the whole human society fell apart. The author satirized many phenomena in society by imagining the future. At the beginning there is a sentence writes “ She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.” It seems that the machines make the social contact more convenient to connect us all together, but actually to the contrary, a phenomenon is analyzed by the author that modern people are increasingly dependent on science and technology which has created a non-necessity for direct interpersonal communication. So instead of connecting us the machines actually make every one of us more isolated.
When things come to the relationship between humans and machine, the arguments never stop. In the story, the machines feed humans, cloth humans, house humans and make humans see as well as hear from each other. Humans, in return, think of machines as something sacred as religion. If the machines stop, humans will die. It’s a tragedy that humans have forgotten that it is themselves that create the machines. They forget that they create the machines to do their will but in the end, they have to compromise with the machine. I think behind the story, the key idea the author wants us to know is “ Man is the measure”.
After reading the article, look back on our daily life. Our life is full of high technology and algorithm which make our life become monotonous. Is it really what we want in the beginning? Will the physical and mental deterioration happen like the plot of the story? In this era of rapid technological progress, maybe it’s time to reconsider the relationship between humans and machine. Be the master of the machine, not the slave.
E.M. Foster’s “The Machine Stops” _ April Qiu
In the article “The Machine Stops”, E.M. Forster presents a science-fictional world that relies on an enormous machine. People live in their rooms with everything provided. They have no need to go out. All the rooms are the same over the world. People keep in touch with each other through the machine. They don’t interact with others face to face anymore. Each human being is isolated. The civilization in this world is a system that “bringing things to people”, rather than “bringing people to things”.
There are two characters in this article. They are the mother Vashti and the son Kuno. Vashti is very adapted to this world and enjoys her life in the machine. I found that she is extremely indifferent with everything, even with herself. When her son asks her to see him, she thinks it’s a waste of time to travel. When she is in the air-ship, all the views outside the window are “no ideas” to her. When her friend is granted Euthanasia, she doesn’t mind. She even asks for Euthanasia herself after an unsuccessful lecture. Also, she always emphasizes on “civilization”. She has superstition on the Machine. She spontaneously gives up her gifts as a human, like the ability to observe, think, and love, but choose to rely on the Machine. I can see no humanity in this character. I think E.M. Forster means to show the alienation of people under the influence of the Machine through Vashti, but I don’t think E.M. Forster is criticizing these people. I feel that he sympathizes on them through the sentence “ever since her birth she had been surrounded by the steady hum”. How could we blame them if they’ve never experience silence? They are born and raised in that inhumane way. They are pathetic people, but not bad people.
Kuno, on the opposite, represents those who still have humanity inside. He is brave and curious. He raises an important point that “man is the measure”. I believe this is what E.M Forster trying to argue.
After reading this article, I feel that “the Machine” does not only refer to the technology, but also refers to a government or any other system. The Machine is like an authority. People invent technological products to improve their lives. People support a government to lead them. The authority or the system is what the people make of it. However, people may be controlled by it little by little involuntarily. I find that it is really easy for people to adapt to an environment. Because of this, it is so important for us to keep in mind that “man is the measure”. When we are in a society or even only interacting with others, we are always adapting ourselves. In this kind of process, we should always keep our ability to think and make our own decisions. We should never lose our humanities. A civilization without humanity will eventually collapse, like the Machine in the article. People without humanities inside will hard to live on once what they rely on falls, like Vashti.