The Machine Stops
Reviews
I was prompted to reread this short story when a comment on the review video I made of it years ago suggested that we're living through this scenario now. There are certainly parallels of physical isolation / digital community which are eerily prophetic, but I think this book says so much more, about finding meaning in living and cultural homogeneity and absolutism. Really looking forward to exploring these topics in a new video soon; this remains the most thought-provoking short story I've ever read.
Pretty dark and amazing view of what the future would hold for us.
“Man's feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the measure for ownership, his body is the measure for all that is lovable and desirable and strong.” It's kind of uncanny how something published in 1909 is so relatable to today.
An interesting short story, an obvious base for the sci-fi genre
Highlights
Man, the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures visible, man who had once made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength on the constellations, beautiful naked man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven.
She had never known silence, and the coming of it nearly killed her – it did kill many thousands of people outright.
But there came a day when, without the slightest warning, without any previous hint of feebleness, the entire communication-system broke down, all over the world, and the world, as they understood it, ended.
Today, the world would end.
Thousands of miles away his audience applauded. The Machine still linked them. Under the seas, beneath the roots of the mountains, ran the wires through which they saw and heard, the enormous eyes and ears that were their heritage, and the hum of many workings clothed their thoughts in one garment of subserviency.
Less prescient that one might think; first successful submarine telegraph cables existed in the late 1800s.
The sigh at the crisis of the Brisbane sym- phony no longer irritated Vashti; she accepted it as part of the melody. The jarring noise, whether in the head or in the wall, was no longer resented by her friend. And so with the mouldy artificial fruit, so with the bath water that began to stink, so with the defective rhymes that the poetry machine had taken to emit.
Generative models like GPTs do indeed emit defective rhymes; especially below a certain size.
The Machine develops – but not on our lines. The Machine proceeds but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries and if it could work without us, it would let us die.
1909 description of alignment failure.