While reading the first 2 episodes of this fiction, I was wondering about “the ideas” Vashti keeps bringing up. As a lecturer herself, Vashti comes up with ideas inside her machine, without communicating with creatures or natural creations, but she keeps stressing “there are no ideas” when she sees or hears nature. Section 3 mentions in Vashti’s mind, people should learn about “what I think that ” great people think, projecting “the ideas” are no more than what these so-called “advanced people” generate from what the machine chooses to present them with. The machine, the supreme leader, the god of this world, maintains the order of this underground society by restraining the humanity intercourse, in a way it is easier to control, but in another, it degrades people. This system reminds me of the book The Giver, in which the residents are born without feelings, every what we consider as normal human interaction is made into rules or even jobs (giving birth, for example). This system indeed simplifies governing process, for the minds of people are consolidated, but without noticing it themselves, human beings are becoming puppets of the system (in this case, the machine). “The ideas” Vashti considered free-will are planted into her mind beforehand.
This fiction from over 100 years ago projects a similar scenario nowadays. Here, we have the Internet as the machine. Desire communication? There’s no need to head outside, a simple Facetime solves the problem. There’s no denying that the Internet is essential for us and most of us wouldn’t survive a day without it, but judging from the extreme case in the fiction The Machine Stops, we are getting too dependent on the Internet. Think about the time you lost for exercising outdoors just because you got yourself a new iPhone. Put laziness aside, the power of mind control from the Internet can’t be neglected, how many of us are judging others just through online sources? We are not able to examine the authenticity of every source before bring out our “ideas”. The filter bubbles online are just like the knowledge the machine chooses to present the residents with, we are trapped in the filter bubbles created by our browsers every second. Yes, it simplifies our process of getting to the websites that interest us the most, but in that case, our mind can never go beyond the bubbles, we, who still think we are free-minded, are nowhere better than the residents in the machine whom we laugh at.