Category: JH Moon

    The fiction story “The Machine Stops” presents a future society where people live under the control of the machine and can only communicate through the machine. The machine almost become a religious leader in the virtual world that it creates and people lost themselves in the machine’s time. When the machine breaks down, human society collapses easily because every individual is isolated and alienated. Only at this time did people realize that the worship of the machine will finally destroy themselves.

    Although the story seems extreme and horrible, it has some realistic significance which shows the potential outcomes of the machine-oriented society. In modern society, we can hardly live without machines or electronic devices. Our computers that connected with the internet becomes our “eyes” to see the views, our “ears” to hear the sounds or even our “brain” to think and operate. All the electronic devices deprive human of our senses and autonomous thoughts. The communication and connection between people are so dependent on these devices that we become addicted to them and neglect the foundation as a human being, for example, the way we communicate face to face or the right to control our will and consciousness. Just like Vashti thought in the story “the Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people — an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes”. When people believe whatever the machine shows to them, they will lose the ability to feel the real and subtle emotion or experience the natural world. The inner spirit of an individual and people’s fundamental rights are eliminated. The internet and the big data in modern society try to isolate us from the natural world or our inner selves by presenting limited information and affecting our decision. If we are not alert to the disadvantages when using and developing the machine and technology, they may ultimately destroy us.

       The Machine Stops is a science fiction about the future world. It is an extreme industrialized world that people rely too much on the machine in their whole life. Vashti always stays at her home, and she is afraid of reaching the ground and communicate with other people face to face. In this world, there is a huge amount people like Vashti. Most people adore the machine and trust everything on the book of the machine. In other words, they are controlled by the machine. However, one day the machine suddenly stops. The countries collapse and people are going to die.

       Although the novel is written in 1909, it still have ironic meanings in nowadays society. I have to admit that the smartphone is an indispensable thing in my daily life. And social software is also very important for me to communicate with others. I can use them to communicate with my parents, friends and even strangers without going out of my room. The smartphone and the internet are like the machine in the novel.  We can talk to other on video like how Vashti talks to her son Kuno in the novel.

      In the novel, Vashti communicates with her son only by the machine. Only when Kuno says that he will not talk to Vashti unless Vashti comes does Vashti go out of her home. In our society, we also have a similar phenomenon that we may now rely too much on the internet and ignore the people around us. So that let me think about a lot of questions. What if one day the internet crashed such as the stopped machine? Do we have other methods to communicate with each other instead of the internet?

In “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster, it talks about how in the future, the surface of planet earth is no longer a sustainable environment for human life to survive. To solve the problem, people lived underground and created “the Machine”, a global and omnipotent device that controls all spiritual and bodily needs that are needed and desired from human. The short story is primarily focused on two main characters, Vashti and her son Kuno, who live on opposite sides of the world. As we learn more about their communications and Kuno’s “outrageous ideas” and how others react to it, the machine slowly deteriorates and breaks down, bringing “civilization” down with it. After the two characters realize that in reality, humanity and it’s connection with the natural world is what really matters and something that is unnatural and technological is bound to have flaws.

When I finished reading this, I realized that in many ways, the ending message was very true. With green energy, power is built from the natural environment such as wind power and solar energy. Although technology is used to the convert the power over, the root of it all is natural, as opposed to burning fossil fuels for energy. It’s also scary to think that as we continue to develop AI, many people speculate that it will get to a point where AI will destroy human civilization, which is a common theme in sci-fi novels and films. However, while reading the short story, it was interesting to me how although the machine was the main controller of the underground people, it had not developed the capability to self repair and required human activity to fix that. Perhaps that could be a tool that is used to enhance AI. That as great as it can be, as long as the AI does not have the ability to self repair, then ideas such as the “end of human civilization” would not be an issue. 

“The Machine Stops” shows a chilling view of how the world may come to be, if we – humanity – one day create a machine that can out-think the best of us, and eventually make us all its slaves. In this short story, an omnipresent Machine attends to our every need, and in doing so becomes completely our master. Human beings live in a state of near-complete physical atrophy, essentially reduced to a brain and the systems that power it. With all of our physical needs taken care of, such that we hardly need to stand up or sit down, and almost never walk or leave the room, we are free to concentrate fully on developing and using our minds. In this world, ideas are all that matter. This, at least, is the philosophy that Vashti, the story’s protagonist (if you can call it that) lives by. It’s ingrained in her very being, hiding behind every thought that she thinks. Apparently, the human body exists as merely a receptacle for the mind, nothing else; and such things as touching someone else’s skin and feeling the sun shine upon your own, simply are not relevant. Ideas, that’s it. You exist to create ideas (not original ideas, mind you – it’s made clear in the story that original ideas are tainted with human subjectivity and emotion, and must therefore be avoided like the plague).

This unbalanced relationship between body and mind mirrors the relationship between humans and the Machine, where the humans who once performed their own actions for their own reasons now simply carry out their one-dimensional, preordained lives for the sole purpose of keeping the Machine alive. To me, such as Machine sounds exactly like a parasite. While a parasite cannot survive on its own, it infiltrates a host and then keeps the host or hosts alive for the sole purpose of keeping itself alive. Similarly, the Machine has completely taken over human society, keeping people alive just barely to the bare minimum of not being dead, so that they can keep the Machine running while being powerless to stop it (and at this point, such a thought would never even occur to most of them). And once you consider the parallels between the Machine and that greatest weapon of ours, which we have determined to be our most valuable asset – the human mind – then the metaphor becomes clear, or at least clearer. So a virus feeds upon the body and energy of its host, and the Machine sustains itself by virtue of the lives and machinations of its human slaves (slaves because by this point in time, no person was left who could understand the bigger picture of how the Machine worked and its purpose), so also the human mind, with its relentless logic and rationality, slowly takes over complete control over the body, the passions, and the senses, until nothing is left but ideas. And it’s brilliant, really – just as the Machine has conditioned its people to never even think of questioning its place in their lives, to never once ask whether there’s more to life than a single room and a wall of buttons (though a remarkable few still try), we humans also don’t question the legitimacy of our current modes of thinking, of our relentless drive to progress and advance and evolve, for it is our minds that have led us along these routes in the first place! I suppose the main message of the story is that we mustn’t lose sight of the things that matter in life, the bits (aside from thinking about things) that make our lives worth living. By living our lives in accordance to what really matters, not just what we may think matters, we can separate our minds from that of the Machine, and avoid such a disastrous ending for mankind.

Or perhaps I’ve overthought this a bit, and the parallels that I drew don’t actually exist. It wouldn’t be the first time.

In all, “The Machine” paints a picture of a future society that is quite different and contradictory to ours now. The Machine is a flying society of its own, in which people have been raised to grow dependent on it for their own survival. It’s as if they cannot live without its function, and as shown in the rather dark end of the reading, this is exactly the case. In a way, it shows how the more technology evolves and advances, the more humans give into it and are eventually lost. The people treat The Machine as if it is a God, or a ruler in which they are the obedient and passionate servants who wait at its feet. When Kuno calls his mother, Vishta (using some holographic display, possibly like that of R2D2’s) he expresses his desire to see her physically. She is devoid of feeling such emotions for her son as a result of the way society is now, after being so entangled with technology. She says that it really isn’t necessary. However, the biggest scene is when Kuno finally expressed his desire to go down to the Earth’s surface in the way their ancestors once did. This is when Vishta was shocked out of the water. She did not know how her son could possibly get such ideas, and was disappointed for having to call him her son. This is very unusual, as in today’s society having huge ideas that have potential  for greatness are praised. In fact, the biggest fans of those creators are most likely going to be their parents! The fact that most of these life changing ideas that change our society today are usually electronic/ dealing with technology is so interesting, because Kuno arguably having much simpler ideas to do a simple task are looked down upon by so many, including his own mother. It also shows that, by this point in time where the story takes place, that technology has advanced so much to the point where there are no breakthroughs (at least one can assume this if The Machine has risen to a God status by now).  In the end, this story highlights the possible dangers of technology advancement in the future, but also gives an insight into the plethora of possibilities humans have to change the world in a technological standpoint. It is interesting to be able to read these kinds of stories and fully take in the life we are able to live today, all the while observing the many ways in which technology changes it.