THE MACHINE STOPS
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- cosmobirdie
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Anybody who uses the Internet - and that's pretty much everyone - should read E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops. It is a chilling, short story masterpiece about the role of technology in our lives. Written in 1909, it’s as relevant today as the day it was published. Forster has several prescient notions including instant messages (email!) and cinematophoes (machines that project visual images).
THE MACHINE STOPS
Arts — POSTED BY Charlotte Walsh on March 22, 2010 at 10:27 am | Edit
Anybody who uses the Internet should read E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops. It is a chilling, short story masterpiece about the role of technology in our lives. Written in 1909, it’s as relevant today as the day it was published. Forster has several prescient notions including instant messages (email!) and cinematophoes (machines that project visual images).
by E.M. Forster (1909)
I
THE AIR-SHIP
Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk-that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh-a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.
An electric bell rang.
The woman touched a switch and the music was silent.
“I suppose I must see who it is”, she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery and it rolled her to the other side of the room where the bell still rang importunately.
“Who is it?” she called. 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.
The the full story fro free at http://www.brainwaving.com/2010/03/22/the-machine-stops/
THE MACHINE STOPS
Arts — POSTED BY Charlotte Walsh on March 22, 2010 at 10:27 am | Edit
Anybody who uses the Internet should read E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops. It is a chilling, short story masterpiece about the role of technology in our lives. Written in 1909, it’s as relevant today as the day it was published. Forster has several prescient notions including instant messages (email!) and cinematophoes (machines that project visual images).
by E.M. Forster (1909)
I
THE AIR-SHIP
Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk-that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh-a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.
An electric bell rang.
The woman touched a switch and the music was silent.
“I suppose I must see who it is”, she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery and it rolled her to the other side of the room where the bell still rang importunately.
“Who is it?” she called. 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.
The the full story fro free at http://www.brainwaving.com/2010/03/22/the-machine-stops/
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cosmobirdie
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I'm so glad you guys liked it...pretty spooky and distopian isn't it. Personally I've got a bit more faith in the spirit of the internet...you should check out this video, its unbelievable http://www.brainwavingtv.com/2009/what-does-it-all-mean-%E2%80%93-the-times-are-...
- 1 year ago
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cosmobirdie
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SarahAna
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cosmobirdie:
The scariest, I think, was that india has more smart kids than america has kids! o.O ...Oh well..
- 1 year ago
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SarahAna
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SarahAna
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i loved it
- 1 year ago
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SarahAna
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AmericanStandard
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Great story!! a bit long but very interesting considering it was written in the early 1900's!
- 1 year ago
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AmericanStandard
