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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.

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Week 1: Response to “The Machine Stops” E. M. Forster – Murray Lu

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. 

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Reflection to “The Machine Stops”–Jannie Zhou

The Machine Stops by E.M.Forster presents us with a picture of how humans will live in the time of the Machine. And how the civilization collapses after the Machine stops. To me, the image of people living in the Machine time is absolutely absurd. People live underground, and everywhere is the same. Athletes were destroyed when borne, and there is no religion anymore. People hate touching each other, and they think strength and muscles are useless. But after thinking thoroughly about it, I found this path is exactly what we are heading. We talk through cellphones more, send text messages or facetime each other. But we face each other less. We invented machines to do things for us, both laborious work and tiniest trivia. But we seldom achieve our goals without the help of machines anymore.  We created VR to help us see the world in our armchair. But we go out of the world and expose us to nature less. We became dependent on machines without realizing.

In the context of communication, I take the happening of this phenomenon as a result of not communicating with each other. Nowadays, when in public places, we would prefer to be on our phones than talking to the people around you. Instead of communicating with each other, we communicate with the machines. And we stopped to communicate with nature too. We think we could duplicate nature so that it would save us time to do our work. But when we are using VR or things like that,  we are not communicating with nature. We are communicating with the machine. Will the machine take over and destroy our civilization in the future? I don’t know. But I believe that if we continue what we are doing now without realizing the brutal fact hiding underneath, we will only alienate each other and distance ourselves with the world.

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“The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forester – Madison Eberhardt

E.M. Forsters, “The Machine Stops,” is about a futuristic society in which is controlled by a type of god called, “the Machine.” In the beginning, I believed this “machine” was just the object that Vashti was living in, but then it was Vashti’s whole world, a god in which she would call to in times of need and even would quote from. It can also be noted that it is capitalized and has its own book that is very important to Vashti, as it quotes, “This was the Book of the Machine.” (4) I was wondering whether this book acted more as a bible or like a manual for these futuristic individuals. One aspect that really stood out to me while reading is how Vashti constantly was repeating, “I have no ideas here” even when she was. For example, when she discovers all the beautiful geography below her on the trip to see her son, she continues to persuade herself that no ideas of her own would come of seeing the earth. The machine has completely destroyed the once unique and natural world, leaving its people powerless in its control. They are in belief that safety, happiness, or comfort, is all because of what the machine has provided for them.

Reading how Vashti and Kuno live alongside “the machine” in which has completely taken control over the ideas, lives, and communication of the world, one can compare this to today’s society with the internet and technology. Without both of these advancements today, society would no longer be able to function normally. Our generation is one of the first to grow up with so much access to tech & communication, we are already seeing how disconnected it is making us. Just like how in “The Machine Stops” once the machine stops working, the entire society collapses, I wonder if this has any relation to what could happen if our technology or internet completely stopped working. How would society function? Would individuals simply give up or work to connect back together again?

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Week 1: “The Machine Stops” by EM Forster | Jonathon Haley

“The Machine Stops” shows a chilling view of how the world may come to be, if we – humanity – one day create a machine that can out-think the best of us, and eventually make us all its slaves. In this short story, an omnipresent Machine attends to our every need, and in doing so becomes completely our master. Human beings live in a state of near-complete physical atrophy, essentially reduced to a brain and the systems that power it. With all of our physical needs taken care of, such that we hardly need to stand up or sit down, and almost never walk or leave the room, we are free to concentrate fully on developing and using our minds. In this world, ideas are all that matter. This, at least, is the philosophy that Vashti, the story’s protagonist (if you can call it that) lives by. It’s ingrained in her very being, hiding behind every thought that she thinks. Apparently, the human body exists as merely a receptacle for the mind, nothing else; and such things as touching someone else’s skin and feeling the sun shine upon your own, simply are not relevant. Ideas, that’s it. You exist to create ideas (not original ideas, mind you – it’s made clear in the story that original ideas are tainted with human subjectivity and emotion, and must therefore be avoided like the plague).

This unbalanced relationship between body and mind mirrors the relationship between humans and the Machine, where the humans who once performed their own actions for their own reasons now simply carry out their one-dimensional, preordained lives for the sole purpose of keeping the Machine alive. To me, such as Machine sounds exactly like a parasite. While a parasite cannot survive on its own, it infiltrates a host and then keeps the host or hosts alive for the sole purpose of keeping itself alive. Similarly, the Machine has completely taken over human society, keeping people alive just barely to the bare minimum of not being dead, so that they can keep the Machine running while being powerless to stop it (and at this point, such a thought would never even occur to most of them). And once you consider the parallels between the Machine and that greatest weapon of ours, which we have determined to be our most valuable asset – the human mind – then the metaphor becomes clear, or at least clearer. So a virus feeds upon the body and energy of its host, and the Machine sustains itself by virtue of the lives and machinations of its human slaves (slaves because by this point in time, no person was left who could understand the bigger picture of how the Machine worked and its purpose), so also the human mind, with its relentless logic and rationality, slowly takes over complete control over the body, the passions, and the senses, until nothing is left but ideas. And it’s brilliant, really – just as the Machine has conditioned its people to never even think of questioning its place in their lives, to never once ask whether there’s more to life than a single room and a wall of buttons (though a remarkable few still try), we humans also don’t question the legitimacy of our current modes of thinking, of our relentless drive to progress and advance and evolve, for it is our minds that have led us along these routes in the first place! I suppose the main message of the story is that we mustn’t lose sight of the things that matter in life, the bits (aside from thinking about things) that make our lives worth living. By living our lives in accordance to what really matters, not just what we may think matters, we can separate our minds from that of the Machine, and avoid such a disastrous ending for mankind.

Or perhaps I’ve overthought this a bit, and the parallels that I drew don’t actually exist. It wouldn’t be the first time.