
The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster (1909) - dedalus
http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html
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emiliobumachar
"Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music
began. She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human
intercourse had advanced enormously."

Prescient to the point of being creepy.

~~~
crpatino
Agreed. My personal fabe is: "But the Committee of the Mending Apparatus now
came forward, and allayed the panic with well-chosen words. It confessed that
the Mending Apparatus was itself in need of repair."

If only IVR systems were so candid!

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livatlantis
I love this story. (In fact, I even wrote and recorded a song based on it,
from the perspective of Kuno).

I find the societal obsession with ideas fascinating. Especially this bit:

> _In the evening she looked again. They were crossing a golden sea, in which
> lay many small islands and one peninsula. She repeated, "No ideas here," and
> hid Greece behind a metal blind._

To think that the Earth could inspire nothing is just... sad.

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kaybe
I really wonder what kind of ideas they are talking about. It is never really
said.

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eponeponepon
I think the idea (no pun intended) is that they don't know themselves. There
are certainly parallels with the modern web.

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knattt
An audiobook version is available for free here: [https://librivox.org/the-
machine-stops-by-e-m-forster/](https://librivox.org/the-machine-stops-by-e-m-
forster/)

(librivox is a volunteer/non-professional project, so don't expect
shakespearean acting, but it's good enough)

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johnhattan
A classic. Some of the ideas presented here were literally a hundred years
ahead of their time.

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Fastidious
See:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=the%20machine%20stops&sort=byP...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=the%20machine%20stops&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)
(the many "The Machine Stops" entries on HN)

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pmoriarty
For anyone to whom the name E.M.Forster does not ring a bell,[1] he's more
well known for "A Room with a View" and "A Passage to India".

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._M._Forster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._M._Forster)

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themgt
First ran into this via Atul Gawande, who was recommended it by Oliver
Sacks[1]

"I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear
something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why
I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk
about the hopes that are in my mind."

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/14/oliver-
sacks](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/14/oliver-sacks)

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kqr2
The BBC did a TV adaptation of this story in 1966 as part of its _Out of the
Unknown_ series.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060643/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060643/)

The series was recently released on DVD:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-7-Disc-DVD-Terence-
Morgan/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-7-Disc-DVD-Terence-
Morgan/dp/B00KF9LPBO)

~~~
fitzwatermellow
Nice! There was a BBC4 Radio version as well, but it doesn't seem to be
available on the iPlayer ;(

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dyates
One of my favourite short stories. Impossibly visionary and also quite
terrifying. There was a decent black and white British television adaptation
that might still be somewhere on Youtube.

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Animats
That was so far ahead of its time.

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jmtd
This was one of a series of stories re-published by Penguin for their 80th
anniversary, as part of a series of shorts priced at 80p each. The Forster
book had two stories (can't recall what the second one was, I've only read
"the machine stops" so far).

[http://www.littleblackclassics.com](http://www.littleblackclassics.com)

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EdwardCoffin
_A Celestial Omnibus_ : [http://www.penguin.co.uk/books/the-machine-
stops/97801411959...](http://www.penguin.co.uk/books/the-machine-
stops/9780141195988/)

