Category: Foundations

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Response to E.M. Forster – Mingyue Deng

As I read E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops, I was shocked at the ignorance and conformity people looked for in the universe created by Forster. Since I have just read science fictions such as The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu and I have just watched the film The Wandering Earth, I have encountered many descriptions about the underground cities which people would be living in the future when supposedly the surface of the Earth is no longer livable for human beings. These descriptions of underground cities are very similar in characteristics, and there are two which I want to talk about. First of all, these cities all are limiting to people going up to the surface, especially in The Machine Stops when it is totally forbidden. People wear masks or respirators when they go up to the surface because people could not breathe the air, whether true in the case of The Wandering Earth and The Three Body Problem or told by the Book in The Machine Stops. The second similar characteristic in imagining the future underground cities is the artificial space and lighting and comfort created by either the people in the United Earth Government or the Machine. There seems to always be hope in the future even when human beings cannot live where they have always lived.

Then I saw the cruelness of all three pieces and especially The Machine Stops. In the other two pieces I read and watched on my own, people are hopeful and successful until the end. However, in The Machine Stops, I want to return to what I said at the beginning of this response, they were ignorant and self-interested. They are living in a huge bubble created by the Machine and they are never doubting the ways they are living because they are the generations born into this kind of space and living this kind of life. Just like what Kuno said in the work, human beings have lost their sense of sharp thinking and criticism to ignorance and conformity. Throughout the short story, the author repeats phrases like it was told to these people so they follow it. They were all looking for ideas but they never found one interesting idea which is original. I suppose that the Machine was built by some intelligent people who have original ideas, but when I read that they have already died and passed down the books to later generations, I thought the world must be ending fast because people would want to take control of the Machine so they could be more powerful. And this process would then remind me of 1984. However, when I read that the people only learned by parts the entire control system to the Machine, I realized that these people are less intelligent than I think. The reason why I thought that is because when these people are also living in a world where there is only comfort and convenience and they think every other method are stupid when they are not inventing or thinking or believing, they are going to fail at the smallest tasks. In the end, the people who made the Machine and the Book and the underground cities were the thinkers and the inventors, and the next generations after who would only copy and paste the Founding Fathers without new innovations would only be duller and duller in their ways of life.

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Week 1: Response to “The Machine Stops” by E.M.Forster- Laura Huang

    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.

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Response to E.M. Forster – Ta-Ruedee Pholpipattanaphong (Ploy)

“The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster discusses the relationship between humans and machines. Throughout the price, he portrays a society in which machines took over humanity. Ultimately, it reaches the point where human depends on machines to live, and without machines human will die. It is quite ironic in ways that humans seek to become independent but however, they are the one who allows themselves to depend on non-living objects, machines. It is even more ironic when we consider that those non-living objects were created by them. The sentence, “Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will” (15) written by E.M Forster really struck me to see that it is our own behaviours that harm our societies, and it is only to mankind that should be blamed. It’s totally ironic that whilst humans struggle to live, machines – created by mankind – live smoothly.

It is all because humans placed machines to a degree that exceeds necessity, resulting in how they “worship the Machine” (11). In the piece, Vashti knows that her son is in danger or even is facing death because of his choice to get rid of and be independent of the machines. She loves her son and cares for her son. But still, she chose to go back to her machines as if the machines are more important to her.

After reading this piece, it came to my realization that if we continue the process of technological dependence, we would soon reach the point where human beings are replaced by machines. And thus, instead of celebrating the significances of mankind, it will give rise to the society composing of the boss – machines and their slaves – humans.

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Week 1: Response to “The Machine Stops” by E. M. Forster – Susie (Yi Shan)

       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?

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Response to E.M. Forster “The Machine Stops” – Jiannan (Nan) Shi

E.M. Forster wrote “The Machine Stops” one hundred years ago, and we could see: people were still using “books,” and airships have not reached the space yet. Some scenes have already achieved in a different format for now:  we now are able to communicate in voice and real-time video with a person from the other side of the world through the internet, just as how Vashti did with her son. We are now also able to attend a remote lecture thanks to the internet. Yes, this is a work of prediction with a high possibility of coming true, but with a tone of warning. We always regard the development of technology a “progression,” and thank the “advance of science” over and over again. But we seldom question do we really need these advancements, and where would the advancements lead us to.

In the story, this is a world where technology is so advanced that it serves human, helps human achieve goals that they can never think of. One only need to press buttons to get food, play music, take showers, attend lectures. “Thanks to the Machine,” it becomes an easy thing to fly across continents and overlook the Himalayas. Thanks to the Machine, interpersonal communication becomes real-time across different places. Vashti does not need to move even one step or raise her arm for one centimeter when she wants to act something: technology would help her, and serve her. All she needs to do is to provide ideas to herself and the community earth. We might never consider it a bad thing to have one assistant who could help us do all the tedious trifles, don’t we?

However, this is also a world where technology is so advanced that it controls human, and human has to adapt to this world in order to give way for technology development. The only connection between human and machine is “the book of the Machine,” and human has no other right but to obey what the book says about Machine. When Kuno wanted to be a father, he was refused because he was not “a type that the Machine desired to hand on.” Being muscular is a demerit, since “he would never have been happy in that state of life to which the Machine had called him.” Travel becomes few and few, because “thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over.”

No matter how the means, tools, or technologies of communication change, let’s leave some humanity sustained in the place you and I are living. I would strongly advocate for this statement, at least in my state of mind for now.