
The Machine Stops (1909) - mo
http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html
======
primitivesuave
This is one of the greatest and most influential short stories ever. I
remember in college we had long debates about how the machine is the
equivalent of what Facebook would be if "the machine stops" (i.e. social
networking suddenly shuts down).

Here are a couple worthwhile things to note about this: \- E.M. Forster wrote
this in 1909, before there were even televisions. He essentially predicted
humanity's future obsession with screens long before anyone else did, and even
predicted the advent of video chat. \- He predicted that humanity would become
increasingly isolated and disconnected from the regular world, to the extreme
that they literally must live underground. \- He predicted that those who
controlled the machine would act in malevolence (this is, to some extent, true
today)

In the end, it's just a perspective on a dystopian future, somewhat like Ayn
Rand's Anthem. Although people tend to have quite polarized views in this
area, everyone can appreciate the quality of writing and clarity of purpose in
The Machine Stops.

~~~
arethuza
Forster regarded personal friendship as being of supreme importance, famously
saying:

 _' If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I
hope I should have the guts to betray my country'_

------
jodrellblank
And so with the mouldy artificial fruit, so with the spam email and the blog
and YouTube comments, so with in-app advertising, so with cloud server user
tracking, so with clueless legislation. All were bitterly complained of at
first, and then acquiesced in and forgotten. Things went from bad to worse
unchallenged.

"No ideas here," murmured jodrellblank, and hid the discussion thread by
clicking back to the frontpage.

------
Pitarou
OMIGOSH!

This story was in a sci-fi compendium that my Dad had. It made a huge
impression on me what I was about 12 years old. I must have read it at least 3
times.

At that time, the name of the author (E. M. Forster) meant nothing to me, and
I had no idea just how early (1909) the story was in the history of science
fiction.

In a way, the fact that it's so early means this work has aged better than
more recent works. An author in, say, the 1970s, would look at the technology
around him, and base his version of The Machine on that. But in E.M. Forster's
time it just didn't exist (apart from the airships) so he had to use his
imagination.

------
RevRal
While we are on the topic of great sf shorts:

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream:
[http://users.pop.umn.edu/~matt0350/images/forumcrap/october/...](http://users.pop.umn.edu/~matt0350/images/forumcrap/october/scream.pdf)

The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect: [http://localroger.com/prime-
intellect/mopiidx.html](http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/mopiidx.html)

~~~
Rusky
The Last Question:
[http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html](http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html)

~~~
chazu
This one _blew my mind_ as a kid. I probably squealed with delight when I
finished it.

------
kepano
This is a short book I recommend to everyone. 70 pages, 1909 and it still
feels futuristic. He predicts commercial flight, the internet (Spotify, Skype,
podcasting). Remember that this is before the popularization of radio.

The beauty of his language is in the abstract representations of technology.
This is what makes the ideas behind it continually relevant and futuristic to
this day.

The most philosophically profound ideas in it presage Baudrillard's conception
of hyperreality.

------
brianstorms
Should be required reading of every single startup person, period. Well, every
person in the world, period. It describes our future pretty well. Stay calm
and continue chatting on Secret or WhatsApp, nothing to see here.

------
oscillator
The BBC's 1960's TV version of this story is on YouTube here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvrGUnIFuRs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvrGUnIFuRs)

------
scarygliders
There is another element within the story that I think people overlook.

Most people seem to focus on the Machine stopping, and that because of this,
the humans dwelling within it perish.

More importantly, why did the Machine stop? It stopped because the people
within it lost the science, engineering, materials, maths, and physics
knowledge it took to build the Machine in the first place - the Machine
appears to have bred that desire for such knowledge out of them. In effect,
the Machine killed itself by removing the humanity from Humanity.

~~~
jodrellblank
_Most people seem to focus on the Machine stopping_

I think the more miserable dystopian part of it is that the people inside the
machine don't seem to do much, have no purpose, no future, even if the machine
works perfectly.

That seems to reflect my experience of the present day, in a much more
unsettling way than the idea that "someday it might all fall apart".

And interestingly, "the horror of direct experience" and the references to the
interaction with the air stewardess - the sort of things you might have a
therapist or self-help guru to work on today - there's no mention that those
are even recognized as problems, not things The Machine can help with or is
trying to help with. While Vashti is having ideas and lecturing on music,
she's blunt and cruel to people, even her son, she's preoccupied with keeping
up appearances ("that's not mechanical, you can't say/do that") and afraid of
being seen taking comfort from the instruction manual, something presumably a
large number of people also do.

Do these sort of things automatically follow from the idea of "setting a story
in a technological future", and why?

~~~
scarygliders
>> Do these sort of things automatically follow from the idea of "setting a
story in a technological future", and why?

Not necessarily - Iain M. Banks' Culture series is a good example, where the
Culture is portrayed as being a Utopia where the Machines - Minds - have all
but taken over the day to day running of the society, replete with limitless
energy availability, hedonism, and the inhabitants can basically do just about
whatever the heck they want.

The great thing about the Culture stories is that for some, that Utopia is a
bit of a nightmare for them.

------
Einstalbert
So much of human interaction is made difficult by our lack of understanding
one another. I love these silly little fantasy worlds that we busy ourselves
with, hell even television shows, because it gives people something else to
share in common. You experienced the story, the music, the feel of the last
episode of X, Y, Z, right? I was there, too, in a way. Let's share our
thoughts.

Maybe if humans take it too far and forget to share, or neglect other things
along the way, that the machine will stop.

~~~
jodrellblank
_I love these silly little fantasy worlds that we busy ourselves with, hell
even television shows, because it gives people something else to share in
common._

When all we did was find food, eat, sleep we all had everything in common.

The more things there are in the world, the fewer things we can have in common
- Let's share our thoughts in more than a quick comment, or more than skim-
reading a blog post? - "We don't have the time".

~~~
Angostura
We may have a smaller proportion of things in common, but _fewer_ , I'm not so
sure about that. The richer the set of an individual's experience, the less he
or she will have in common with other similarly rich individuals.

------
Catmacey
Truly a great book and happily it's available as an audiobook from LibraVox.
There are three different readings, my favourite being this one.
[https://librivox.org/the-machine-stops-version-3-by-e-m-
fors...](https://librivox.org/the-machine-stops-version-3-by-e-m-forster/)

------
jscheel
I read this in my college sci-fi lit class. It's still as amazing now, as it
ever was. When WALL-E came out, I couldn't help but think that the
screenwriters were heavily influenced by it.

------
jrabone
I find it quite ironic that the 'machine' has failed dismally to reproduce
this text correctly, by making the usual pigs ear of character encodings and
rendering Ælfrid as �lfrid in my browser, the latter being corrupted beyond
trivial machine recovery.

We (or at least speakers of languages that don't fit into ASCII) are doomed.

------
zobzu
I love well written stuff. I wish we made more of this today.

