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.