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Week 1: Response to E.M Forster – Sebastian Lau (Chen)

A few thoughts that I had while reading the passage that I might not touch on in depth later on:

  • Everything being uniform/similar. “Rapid intercourse” (6) was mentioned where Shrewsbury and Pekin were so similar that there was no point in going from one place to the other. Seems to blame the fact that everything is so similar on the fact that there was so much ‘intercourse’ between them. Sounds like a commentary on how globalization makes the places that are part of the global network trend towards one template or model (e.g. globalized countries are arguably also becoming more Westernized)
  • Ideas are scarce, and therefore commodified. Vashti has to consider whether certain images give her any ideas which would be a weird thing to think outside of her world’s context. Her friends ask her if she has had any ideas, as if it’s a noteworthy occasion.
  • In my opinion the story is pretty blunt with what it’s trying to say. I’m going to assume that the person who wrote it was being intentionally blunt with their message. I think it works well in terms of making the reader feel somewhat uncomfortable. I would compare it to a movie called The Lobster, which, like the society in The Machine Stops, is very different than our society today. In the movie the dialogue is very stilted to emphasize the differences in our society and theirs. In terms of storytelling I don’t think The Machine Stops does a very good job of showing and not telling, but I guess one can assume that the heavy-handed descriptions are meant to hammer home how alien their society is.
  • Mending worms captured Kuno who tried to escape and killed another person. Could be seen as the Machine trying to fix the society by pruning those who are deemed as undesirable or dangerous.

Although there are many things to take away from the story, the one that stuck out to me the most is how efficiency and control has changed humanity. I guess I would compare it to another movie, Wall-E where the people on the space ship have become helpless without machines. In both The Machine Stops and Wall-E the people have pretty much everything at their fingertips. This eradicates the need for them to ever use any effort. For the people in Wall-E this makes them obese to the point where they can’t even walk, in The Machine Stops not only are people physically weak (not to the extent of the Wall-E people) but strong people are euthanized apparently because they won’t be able to fully enjoy their life without nature. Control is also another aspect of life which has dramatically changed in The Machine Stops. Vashti has had control over pretty much everything in her life. When she gets her food, when she goes to sleep, when she wants complete silence or not. When she doesn’t have control over her situation, like the light streaming through her broken blinds, she gets scared and acts almost like an animal.

I think there a ton of things to take away from The Machine Stops. Given that the story was published in 1909 E.M Forster most likely did not write the story as a commentary on modern society’s reliance and fascination with technology and the efficiency and control it provides. However, I do believe that he presents a dystopia that has come about as a result of society’s (today and in the past) desire to become more like a machine: efficient and able to control everything. As a result, we make everything more efficient at the cost of personality. Communication is a lot more convenient now, we can call people across the world with ease, but it’s not the same as being with them in person. Our goal to become more like a machine has come at the cost of our own humanity.  

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Week 1: Response to “The Machine Stops” By E.M. Forster – YaChi Chang

After reading The Machine Stops, the first thought that popped up in my mind was that E.M. Forster is such a great fortune teller, for everything he imagined back a century ago corresponds with what is happening currently. The Machine represents the prevailing internet in modern days. Generally, it seems that the whole story was written in an ironic tone. People bank too much on the Machine that they cannot feed themselves without all these buttons and mechanisms. At the very beginning of the story, Vashti was sitting in her armchair, with a great bunch of buttons around her. With a press, she could get everything she wanted, just as what we do today with our smartphones and the Internet.

Throughout the story, one scene that hits my nerve the most is when Vashti was talking with her son through the plate. Kuno, her son said, “I want to see you not through the machine.” This scene reminds me of those chatting application nowadays. With the help of internet, we can see whoever we want through videochat. Then we forget the true essence of getting along with other individuals face to face-emotion, which can hardly be felt through the screen. The internet, or the Machine, is indeed convenient. The only thing that matters in current society is that we use this tool “humanly”. Just as mentioned in the text, “man is the measure”. We should feel this world by ourselves, with the help of the Internet, rather than feel this world through it.

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Week 1: Response to E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” – Tenielle Ellis

“The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster displays a world ruled by technology, and life on surface Earth as nothing. More specifically, the author pinpoints two main character’s relationship: Kuno, and his mother — Vashti, to display the difference of opinion between heavily believing and relying on The Machine, and a curious but determined mind to fight the system and understand the “outside”. Some themes I picked up from this reading, was the imagery of the story and the dialogue to portray this message. It really made me as a reader fully intrigued and entangled in knowing what it is like to be living in a world that is predominately dictated by technology.

An underlying message could be that — being on our phones, laptops, and devices too much could literally “blind” us from seeing the world…what’s right in front of us. A metaphor that Forster used, was Vashti pulling down the blinds in the Air-Ship to avoid any type of light that Nature emits, as well as to avoid observing the different locations her and her fellow passengers were going over. Even the flight attendant was trying to advise her to close the blinds and stay focused on the journey provided by The Machines, instead of trying to gain more insight, perspectives, or ideas about the outside world. Another example, could be when the passenger next to her got so angry that she touched her, for touching others was sort of a taboo act. I can relate this Air-ship experience to my point: being on technology so much can literally blind you to the outside world, or reality.

Relating this back to my life, I know that when I’m in public using my phone, I make sure not really be bothering anyone, let alone touch them because not only am I engulfed in my social media, but so is the next person. Our heads are all down focused on this singular device that we worship so much (how Vashti and her other passengers did with The Machines) and we see nothing but this screen, there could possibly be no world outside of technology. However, if we allow technology to take over our full focus, it could potentially “kill” our perceptions, our dreams, and our ideas about everything.

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Week 1:Response to E.M. Forster (Winny Wang)

Response to E.M. Forster

When we imagine about the future, people can’t neglect the question that where we are going and whether there is an end. The sci-fi story The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster offers the answer of a catastrophe; and while it is the end of the life of an entire generation, it is not the end of humanity. This brings readers deep questions on technology-based life style and what is necessary for living as a human being.

The saddest element in this story is that people ditch the significance of living. They keep themselves alive in artificial cages where their basic needs are satisfied in a world with no reality. Being born and raised with the extreme dependence on the Machine, people lose senses and feelings, they forget the ways of communication, they even lose their natural rights to experience in real world. Although forms of interaction like talking and observing still exist, society has collapsed into isolated units. Without connection and communication, people are just flesh that consume resources. The point of humanity is lost.

The fall-down of the world and the hope held by Kuno in the end leaves readers a strong impact. It might be hard to visualize the destination when we first start the journey of machinery revolution, but it is a must to keep in mind that “Man is the measure”. Man should never forget senses and communications, or pass the bottom line that let go of the core of humanity. The world may be manipulated, but there will still be one last man standing for humanity, just like “scraps of the untainted sky” Kuno saw before they joined the history made up by dead lives.

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Response to E.M. Forster – Matthew Ballou

This short story, “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster, is about the role technology has in media and its implications of how we experience anything through technological media. Media is any medium through which people experience something. Examples of media include movies, video games, web comics, and, in the case of this book, the Machine. The Machine serves as the sole medium for all interactions inside of your room, which ultimately becomes your world. Everything in Vashti’s life—her baths, her lectures, and her interactions with her son—was experienced through the Machine until she decided to meet him. The Machine was her only way of seeing the world from her room. She “had no ideas of her own[,]” but was fed them through the Machine (4). Seeing the world through only one medium—through the Machine: her world, her truth, her God—left Vashti robbed of her own ideas and removed her capacity to see the world her way. She wasn’t really interested in the process or the discovery of ideas, but only of ideas themselves. She notes this by criticising the system of the previous civilisation, which “had used [the system] for bringing people to things, instead
of for bringing things to people” (5). The process or discovery of these things is irrelevant, to Vashti. The only thing that mattered was the immediacy of the thing—the “truth” she wants.

While we aren’t exactly living inside of the Machine ourselves, there is something to be learned from Vashti and the Machine itself. Namely, how we see technological media. Technological media—and, in my opinion, media in general—should not be seen as a means to an end but an end in of itself. The mere process or discovery of conveying ideas, the media itself, is just as important if not more important than the destination or the “truth.” How a certain mode of media communicates its intended message or theme is crucial. What is lost in the Machine is this discovery or process through a contradictory indirect immediacy. The sea, the world above the ground, and the whole Earth itself is experienced through the Machine, yet this experience loses a significant part of its meaning. The Machine, as Vashti put it, “did not transmit nuances of expression[,]” as it instead reduced the interaction with technological media to a dogmatic and unilateral truth, for “[i]t only gave a general idea… an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes” (3). The particular context for this line was used to describe the lack of nuance to her son’s features when communicating through the Machine, but this idea can easily be extended to every experience users of the Machine have with the world they see through it.

To put it all in a single sentence: how you communicate a point is just as important, if not more important, than what you communicate through media.