
The Machine Pauses - hoffmannesque
https://hedgehogreview.com/blog/thr/posts/the-machine-pauses
======
paulgerhardt
One of the central themes is that all content is mediated - no one reads the
original work but rather commentary on commentary.

In the spirit of this I would encourage you to read the original 1909 E.M.
Forster piece first before reading this piece of commentary or the replies in
this thread: [https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-
Machi...](https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machine-
Stops.pdf)

------
high_5
It's a pattern as old as the technology and civilization dependent on it:

    
    
        1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
        2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
        3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
        4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
        5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
        6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
        7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
        8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
    
        9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
        — Genesis 11:1–9[6]
    

Replace the brick for silicon and slime for oil and here we are, dwelling up
high in the sky, each in our own filter bubble, unable to discuss the
important issues that build society, but managing to unravel it every time we
try to fix it with more technological solutions.

~~~
fartcannon
Is the lord here just a dick? Why would he do that?

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
I highly recommend watching Jordan Peterson's lectures on youtube called
"Biblical Series". They (attempt to) explain this and similar questions from
Christianity to people who are typically smart and approach the world
intellectually, who will usually have trouble with these concepts and the
meaning of the stories.

Regardless of "belief" in Christinity, it is clear to me at least that any
such simplistic interpretation as "god was just a dick", is at the very least,
missing the point of the stories. There is a much more deep and logical
meaning in many of those stories, which becomes very obvious when you get
presented to it, and that's before you even start tapping into the
spiritual/existential/metaphysical content of the stories. It makes much more
sense even as simple life wisdom.

To present an overly simplified answer, I will say that typically (and this is
a typical occurrence in the stories, where god does something painful or
creates an obstruction), when something like that happens, the phrase "god did
it", does not refer so much to the fact that christinaity tries to make up
this god character and give him some lines to make him look a certain way, in
order to tell some message.

Instead, "god did it this way" refers to god being everything, the universe,
including the human societies: god is not something above human world as a guy
in the sky (in fact bible never presents that image, it's more something from
monty python), god is the personfification of the world and everything that
happens in it.

And what happens in it is that sometimes people feel pain, do stupid things,
sometimes tragical (appearing so) events happen. That's just the fact of life.
Christianity does not triumphantly claim that "god did it" as any form of
justification, it simply describes that since those thing do obviously happen,
that means the universe, the world, the society - the god (all those things
combined) make those things happen. And then the rest of the story is
presented in such a way as to understand how humans can act in relationship to
those underelying realities. How they can respond to and understand what is
happening in the world.

~~~
lowdose
Than you really have to stretch the principle of charity beyond what it
reasonable. Just read the first of the ten commandments and there is a very
jealous undertone about other gods.

"I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any strange gods before Me."

From this statement it is very clear to me who God is and that is not the
Universe, society nor the father of time.

~~~
lookdangerous
Ah, but this jealousy makes perfect sense if God is indeed the ‘father of
everything’. It is common in contemporary Christian parlance to refer to idols
as things that distract us from God. This is a very useful concept that is
born directly out of that commandment. And why no idols? Because any construct
of the mind that interferes with seeing true reality is probably going to end
badly- like someone in a blindfold walking off a pier.

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germinalphrase
A link to “The Machine Stops” for those curious:
[http://self.gutenberg.org/wplbn0000627598-the-machine-
stops-...](http://self.gutenberg.org/wplbn0000627598-the-machine-stops-by-
forster-e-m-.aspx)?

------
Nasrudith
I can't help but think of the author as spoiled and out of touch while
worshipping a utopia that never was and forgetting both the brutality of the
past and the fringes of today who lack much of the benefits.

"What has efficency done for us?" is a real straight line, a question that is
a set up for a gag the length of an essay that makes "Who is John Galt" look
terse.

Forget the aquaducts of the romans. Aside from allowing specialization to give
increased benefits like advanced medicine, education, a rising standard of
living for a growing population with a small minority engaged in agriculture,
and reducded environmental impact what has efficency done for us?

~~~
adamsmith838
He’s talking specifically about disposable consumer tech, cranking out
machinery that sits and rots when reality throws a pandemic at us. Chasing new
literal machines for the sake of chasing new literal machines

It’s the difference between focusing on biology of a tree and not ecology of a
forest

Not systems efficiency in general, specific efficiencies we’re chasing by
describing how much time we put into them relative to other time and resource
efficiencies we can look for

There’s no efficiency to be found in launching a new phone every couple years?
In any context?

Maybe your take is what’s “terse”?

~~~
johnday
> He’s talking specifically about disposable consumer tech, cranking out
> machinery that sits and rots [...]

Where did you get this impression from? No such thing is mentioned in the
article, not that I saw at least.

------
adamsmith838
This mirrors Adam Smith’s later opinions on division of labor

After getting all excited about it early on in Wealth if Nations, he later
changed his tune in the book.

Later he went on about it being a monstrous thing that would make people as
stupid as they can be

It’s a Brave New World out there

I am not a Luddite. Nor do I believe a minority of the human population who
can afford these things are owed them at great expense to the planet all
humans have to live on

It’s authoritarian to force a future mess on others. That they’d have to chose
to clean up & stabilize instead of explore

But the west of course is a bunch of nihilists at heart. Too busy ogling the
machine itself to be distracted from the idea their impact could possibly be
harmful to ourselves or the species

[https://youtu.be/y_7V7tEj2Lo](https://youtu.be/y_7V7tEj2Lo)

------
plastic_teeth
Sooner or later this is bound to happen and I think the problem is that are
too used to things working smoothly and not considering an interruption. Also,
time and time again we seem to find it easier to recover from a crisis than to
prevent it. It's really strange...

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I used to worry about people not considering interruptions, but I think recent
events have convinced me I was being too pessimistic. Almost everything I use,
from chairs to obscure condiments to imported canned coffee, can apparently
make it to store shelves or my doorstep during an interruption of everything
with no precedent in living memory.

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awinter-py
> When the mechanical system eventually begins to break down (starting with
> the music-streaming service, then the beds), the people have no choice but
> to take further recourse in the Machine. Complaints are lodged with the
> Committee of the Mending Apparatus, but the Mending Apparatus itself turns
> out to be broken.

EM Forster was brought to the future, filed a single support ticket, and was
sent back to report to his own age

------
blueridge
“Mental health cannot be defined in terms of the "adjustment" of the
individual to his society, but, on the other hand, that it must be defined in
terms of the society to the needs of man, of its role in furthering or
hindering the development of mental health. Whether or not the individual is
healthy, is primarily not an individual matter, but depends on the structure
of his society.”

― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955)

“Enclosed within his artificial creation, man finds that there is "no exit";
that he cannot pierce the shell of technology again to find the ancient milieu
to which he was adapted for hundreds of thousands of years. . . . In our
cities there is no more day or night or heat or cold. But there is
overpopulation, thralldom to press and television, total absence of purpose.
All men are constrained by means external to them to ends equally external.
The further the technical mechanism develops that allows us to escape natural
necessity, the more we are subjected to artificial technical necessities.”

― Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (1954)

“What is more, the whole apparatus of life has become so complex and the
processes of production, distribution, and consumption have become so
specialized and subdivided, that the individual person loses confidence in his
own unaided capacities: he is increasingly subject to commands he does not
understand, at the mercy of forces over which he exercises no effective
control, moving to a destination he has not chosen. Unlike the taboo-ridden
savage, who is often childishly over-confident in the powers of his shaman or
magician to control formidable natural forces, however inimical, the machine-
conditioned individual feels lost and helpless as day by day he metaphorically
punches his time-card, takes his place on the assembly line, and at the end
draws a pay check that proves worthless for obtaining any of the genuine goods
of life.

This lack of close personal involvement in the daily routine brings a general
loss of contact with reality: instead of continuous interplay between the
inner and the outer world, with constant feedback or readjustment and with
stimulus to fresh creativity, only the outer world-and mainly the collectively
organized outer world of the power system-exercises authority: even private
dreams must be channeled through television, film, and disc, in order to
become acceptable.

With this feeling of alienation goes the typical psychological problem of our
time, characterized in classic terms by Erik Erikson as the 'Identity Crisis.'
In a world of transitory family nurture, transitory human contacts, transitory
jobs and places of residence, transitory sexual and family relations, the
basic conditions for maintaining continuity and establishing personal
equilibrium disappear. The individual suddenly awakens, as Tolstoi did in a
famous crisis in his own life at Arzamas, to find himself in a strange, dark
room, far from home, threatened by obscure hostile forces, unable to discover
where he is or who he is, appalled by the prospect of a meaningless death at
the end of a meaningless life.”

― Lewis Mumford, The Pentagon of Power (1964)

"On all sides man was continually made to feel the natural limitations of
earthly well-being. The efficient ministering of the technical, hygienic and
sanitary appliances with which man has surrounded himself is spoiling him. He
is losing the good-humored resignation in the daily imperfections of human
well-being which formed the disciple of earlier generations.

But at the same time he runs the risk of losing the natural ability to take
human happiness as it offers itself, as well. Life is made too easy. Mankind’s
moral fiber is giving way under the softening influence of luxury. In earlier
civilizations, whether Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or any other, there was
always this in contrast: in principle the value of earthly happiness is
deprecated relatively to celestial bliss or union with the All. As all these
religions, however, do recognize a relative worth of early pleasures, and
consider them as God-given, denial of the value of life meant ingratitude. It
was the very realization of the precariousness of every moment of human well-
being which caused it to be appreciated at its true value.

In the present there is a contrast also, but it is a very different one. The
increase of security, of comfort, and of the possibilities of want-
gratification, in short the greater ease of living has had two results: On the
one hand, it has prepared the soil for all forms of renunciation of life:
philosophical denial of its value, purely emotive spleen or aversion from
life; on the other, it has installed the belief in the right to happiness. It
has made people expect things from life. Related to this there is another
contrast. The ambivalent attitude which wavers between the renunciation and
the enjoyment of life is peculiar to the individual alone. The community,
however, without hesitation and with more conviction than ever before, accepts
earthly life as the object of all striving and action. It is indeed a true
worship of life.

Now it is a question for serious consideration whether any advanced culture
can survive without a certain measure of orientation to Death. The great
civilizations of the past have all had it. There are signs that the
philosophical thought of today is also coming to it. It seems only logical,
more over, that a philosophy which rates “living” above “knowing” should also
include the end of life in its vision."

― Johan Huizinga, In the Shadow of Tomorrow (1936)

