The Machine Stops (1909)

THE MACHINE STOPS (1909) — E.M. Forster
In a future where humanity lives underground and is completely dependent on a vast Machine for survival, Vashti and her son Kuno meet to discuss his illicit excursions to the surface.

Forster names as early as 1909 the logic of the technocrat — that once the technic has been introduced, the acceleration cannot be stopped or undone. This mechanization creates new problems (in this instance, the surface of the earth has been made hostile to organic life) that need new technologies of solutions creating new problems.

As this process unfolds, we get further and further away from the “imponderable bloom” of the Real.

Forster predicts a great deal of developments of the Machine that makes reading this book a curious experience. He seems to anticipate the AI infiltration of arts + literature: ““There was a button that produced literature….”, the apathy created by instant gratification: “the room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.” Forster also captures the inevitable social alienation and the enshitification of academia.

As a mode of soothing her nausea at this world, Vashti plunges herself deeper into the technological theology, “O MACHINE! O MACHINE!” — experiencing what he called the delirium of acquiescence.

She keeps repeating “no ideas here,” and I am reminded of Orpheus’ youtube video on Stalker and Labryinths — how the fetish for the IDEA eclipses the emphasis placed on the experience.

Sometimes I find myself feeling that the story takes it a bit too far, on the nose, such as athletic infants being destroyed because the life the Machine required would be too difficult a condition for them to live under. And then I am reminded of my own body — even as unathletic as it is, screaming with frustration as I sit on the computer for huge hours at a time.

He gives his mother an incredible speech on the Machine, how it is the thing that lives while we are dying. It robs us of all our relations, biological origins and then compels us to worship it. It has its own teleology, it’s own goal and direction. He predicts the machine will stop, and is banished shortly after this meeting by the Committee.

When the Machine stops being able to provide any sort of high quality of life, she wonders if Kuno’s prediction is coming true. But despite moldy food and bad poetry and cold bathwater, people just adapted. “Things went from bad to worse to unchallenged,” which is my favorite line of the short story. Then sleeping issues and pain return, people can’t read anymore. The Committee finally admits the Machine needs to be fixed.

It finally breaks, irreparably, and everyone crawls out of their cells. Humanity dies in the tunnels, with the hope that Kuno has seen a few still living on the surface. His mother worries they will just turn the machine back on one day.

Find the book on the Internet ArchiveThe Machine Stops : E. M. Forster