Category: Leon Eckert

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Week 1: E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” — Julia Riguerra

The universe Forster creates in “The Machine Stops” is a dystopian one, telling the common tale of a single revolutionary with radical ideas in opposition to the status quo. In this universe, the Machine governs society and the everyday lifestyles of individuals through the pure convenience of its technology. It is treated as a godlike being even though the population seems aware that it is, indeed, a manmade creation. But like man, the machines they create can never be perfect, nor can they satisfy the many needs and wants of people. As such, it is important to note that technology is viewed as humanity progressing, though Forster’s narrative shows an alternate reality in which technology both governs a society and destroys it.

Forster illustrates the alienating quality of technology through the way in which the characters interact (or don’t) in this society. Human contact is extremely limited viewed as something primeval and abnormal—after all, when you can simply conjure an image of a person or audience, what is the need for physical contact? This is emphasized through the way Vashti interacts with her son Kuno, as the method of childrearing is left to a public nursery where children and parents have limited contact. In spite of this, Vashti still relents when Kuno asks her to: “True, but there was something
special about Kuno — indeed there had been something special about all her children —and, after all, she must brave the journey if he desired it” (Forster 6). This “something special” alludes to the natural bond that parents have with their children, though in such a society this feeling would go unannounced or reached taboo status, as many things related to emotion have.

Forster warns against depending upon technology to the point that it is allowed to infringe upon the innate qualities of human nature, such as human contact (considered “rude”) and exposure to the outside world. However, while assimilation into a society is inevitable when you have known nothing else, it is not impossible to break free of a damaging cycle or simply to identify it, as Kuno asserts, “We say ‘space is annihilated,’ but we have annihilated not space, but the sense thereof. We have lost a part of ourselves. I am determined to recover it” (Forster 11). For a society so infatuated with ideas, the people who inhabit it are terrified of experiencing anything that isn’t within a screen or in the safe confines of their rooms. 

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The Machine Stops (E.M Foster) – Clover（Chenglin Li）

  After reading this piece, I thought about two aspects of this. First is how we should look at the existence of machines. Should we support the development of machines, or should we get rid of them? This piece gives two examples. One is Vashti supporting the existence of machines and relies heavily on them. The other is Kuno who likes to get close to nature while trying to get rid of machines. In my opinion, strongly relying on the machine can lead to emotional emptiness and the loss of human self-awareness. If we only contact through the machine with our family instead of meeting them, we will feel distant from each other, that’s why Kuno only wants to talk face-to-face to ease his pain. If our lives were entirely dependent on machines, we may lose the ability to explore, to learn and to create. How can we fully understand something without touching it, how can we get to know nature without experience it by ourselves? We may just search for everything by machine and don’t discover something new. If one day the machine broke down, we may not know how to repair it. At that point, without the support of the machines, how can people go on living. I think the machine can exist but people should limit the use of machines to a certain extent. It can make life easier for people, and it can also make room for people to create, to explore and improve existing technologies.

  The second aspect is how to deal with the relationship between people and machines. Should we see them as our tools, as our partners or as something we should respect? What impresses me the most about this article is that Vashti is in awe of machines. This relationship is very much like the man to man relationship or the man to god relationship. This makes me think of the artificial intelligence that’s out there now. Machines are becoming more and more human. Many robots can even interact emotionally with humans. The emergence of such machines has caused a great deal of controversy, and many fear that machines will one day take over human, as this piece puts it. But in my opinion, we should encourage the development of the AI because it is still able to provide companionship to some people, to cure their mental and emotional problem. However, we shouldn’t rely on AI for our thoughts and judgment. We have to have our own ideas and creations.

  All in all, we should keep our creativity and our ability to think as a human being. In the meantime, to explore nature and to use the machine properly making them help our lives.

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Response to E.M Forester’s The Machine Stops – Justin Chen

The Machine Stops by E.M Forester is a dystopian short story that centers around the human reliance of what our protagonist and others in that universe calls, the machine. In this fictional piece, human civilization has reached a sense of utopia. Every aspect of human life from entertainment to basic necessity has been managed by the machine. While the machine may be beneficial to these humans, the short story also goes into depth of the shortcomings regarding human society in general. One of those shortcomings centered around the lack of human touch and physical contact. The society in The Machine Stops has progressed to the point where holographic communications between two people are possible. While holographic projections of humans may seem to be the pinnacle of communication, not all seem to enjoy this medium to communicate. The protagonist’s son states “I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you.” In this brief exchange between the protagonist and her son, we can see how her son is dissatisfied by this medium. He wants to see her mother in person in order to have that personal interaction. The fact that while this was written in 1906, E.M Forester was able predict problems that modern day society face today. Currently, the digital age has progressed our ways of communication but at the same time has left people more lonely than over. A research has been done to show how the youth of today have far less social skills compared to older generations. The problem is attributed to consumption of a media such as phones or computers. Another interesting part of that dystopian society is the social norm to not come in physical contact with one another.  For example, the flight attendant was ridiculed when she made physical contact with our protagonist in order to help her when she tripped. While the scenario of a stigma of physical touch is an extreme case, this shows how far human interaction can be removed as a society such as the one in The Machine Stops as communication becomes more revolved around technology and between two humans face to face.

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Reflection on The Machine Stops by E.M. Foster—— By Steve Sun

Reflection on The Machine Stops by E.M. Foster

The fiction describes a dystopian future of human race that the machines took the control over the world. The human in that fictional world lived underground separately in chambers where all their needs were fulfilled by the buttons on the walls. The people spent their whole life in the chambers and their thoughts were generated in it. As a result over many years the people below the surface began to change and worship the machine. The transportation to the surface of the earth and between humans were not banned but no one saw any need in doing such thing. The main character of the fiction are Vashti who was consent with her life in the chamber and her son Kuno who has always challenged the authority of the Machine. The story follows the two of them as they struggle to keep their relationship in this world.

I do agree with a lot of people who have read this fiction that the theme of this story lies in that a world which depend itself solely on the technology and “Machines” will definitely end up catastrophically for human, which in this case is that the machine stops working and collapsed, along with the humans in it. But I think that it’s not only the physical body of the human were destroyed, but also the thought of human were controlled. People living in the chambers simply believe that the environment on surface of the earth is too hostile to live and simply deny the fact that there were indeed people living on it. People who challenge the authority of the Machine will be seen as  ‘unmechanical’ and threatened with Homelessness. And what’s more tragic is that the fact that the human fears the Machine was initially created by human rather than by machine itself. It’s the human who created the machine, it’s also human who are satisfied with their lives imprisoned in the machine and the interaction cut by machine, and its also human who gradually depend their whole life on machine and see them as their god. While machines just followed the things that they are programmed to do, or to some extend, they did nothing, but by doing nothing they controlled human who were meant to control. How ironic.

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“The Machine Stops”by E.M.Forster – Jialu Li

    “Man is the measure.” I think this is the key point of this story. In this story, people gradually lose themselves living in the comfort and convenience provided by the Machine. They lost their creativity and their own thoughts because of the existence of the Book. Every question they meet, there is a standard answer in the Book. No idea in their head is original—they are encouraged to generate ideas from other people’s ideas instead of facts. In a world like that, there is no such concept as “society” where people each have their own job, own responsibilities and they cooperate with each other to build the world they live in. Instead, they are isolated and are heavily dependent on the Machine. They don’t really have a life. Every single day is the same. They seem to have thousands of friends, but the truth is that they are isolated, living in their own little cell all their life. There is communication, even though is it through electrical signals, but all the message they were exchanging was hollow “ideas” and there were no human emotions involved. They have long forgotten how to make a living by themselves—the Machine can do everything for them and they can hardly think of any new things to do due to the lack of imagination and creativity. Man is no longer the measure of their own life, the Machine is. They worship the Machine and are grateful for everything that the Machine gives them. However, they no longer remember that it was human who built the Machine and, as human, they still can create machines that are more powerful than the Machine, they can still make a difference to their life, to the world. Under the convenience of the Machine, people are becoming too lazy to think, too timid to imagine and create something new.
    I think E.M.Forster created a huge world view in this story. There are so many aspects that are worth thinking about, like the interactions between people, the fear for the nature, the reliance on the technology, the assimilation of culture and so on. However, there are still some points that I don’t think Forster had made clear enough. Like who is controlling the Machine? If the Machine is intelligent enough to make decisions by itself then what’s the point of the existence of the Central Committee? If the Machine is operated by the Central Committee, does this mean that it is actually the Central Committee that is limiting people’s imagination and blinding people’s visions? What’s their purpose of maintaining a peace world like this? Where do the fuel of the Machine and the food of the people come from if they never go out to the natural world? Do they grow crops underground? It seems that there is no concept of money or society in this world, why is that?……I know some of these questions are not helpful in showing the theme of this story, but I still find it interesting to think about these questions.