Written in 1909, E.M. Foster’s The Machine Stops is a dystopic projection of humanity in the distant future. In was an idea borne out of the collective fear of the rapid and visible industrialization that marked by that era—smoke guzzling, bulky, machines. With time those machines became more and more complex, with more levers, a vaster range of applicability and function, no longer limited to the industry, but also to the household. It’s inner workings hidden, and only buttons to send directives for the machine to carry out almost invisibly. Foster’s far projection of this development sees human civilization, living, breathing, existing, and eventually worshiping by way of the machine. In the story of 2 named characters, Vashti and her son, Kuno, demonstrated are two clashing philosophies. Vashti, comforted by her hexagonal room, and all of its functions was completely and utterly comfortable limited to its confines. In the room she felt solace and control, she determined when the lights would turn on, what lectures to listen to, what music she heard, when she would sleep etc. In pressing the buttons her life became regimented. Her son, on the other hand, would see it to not only be mundane, but lifeless and limiting. This manifested itself in his curiosity to leave the room, something only attributed to his character, and forced on Vashti. Kuno felt being confined to the room robbed him of creativity and individuality. Kuno felt that their dependence on the machine stripped them of their control, the central committee even, was not above the machine, for they existed, in his eyes, to ensure the perpetual existence of the machine. As the philosophies clashed throughout the story, the machine while thought to be omnipotent and infinite, came to an unexpected, outside of Kuno’s warning, halt. And in its halt, the galleries of humans collapsed in on each other, killing the “civilization.” However, in Kuno’s estimations, the homeless that lived beyond the machine survived.
Today this begs the question of survival and reliance. Given how much of our lives are built on technology, and the developing reliance on it for many different ways, at what point do we lose our control over such technology? The story suggests it need not be when artificial intelligence exists. Instead, Foster suggests that our surrendering of control will occur when we completely rely on it. That then begs the question of when do we stop developing technology? Advancements in many ways have increased our standards of living by a great deal. Should we ever stop?