The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster Predicts Social Media
The shallowness of social media and life online in a 100-year-old book
(NOTE: I wrote this on my now defunct blog in June 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic lockdown, hence the mention of the pandemic, but everything else is still very relevant.)
With the ever-growing expansion of social media influencers and internet gurus who are constantly offering to teach us from their vast experience or depths of accumulated knowledge, I can’t help but think of a novella written by E.M. Forster’s, The Machine Stops.
I read it for the first time about nine years ago, but I have stumbled upon it again recently and was even more shocked by how accurately it predicted the world we live in now.
And this is not a small achievement, considering that the novella was written in 1909.
Everyone is a Teacher
The onset of the Pandemic has seen an incredible rise in online teachers. They were suddenly everywhere, they kept rising up, offering their services, for free or otherwise. The offers range from full-on live courses to booklets, webinars, infographics, guides and email courses.
Writing on a subject doesn’t seem to be enough anymore, you have to teach it, you have to present yourself as an expert.
There are courses on how to create courses and how to become an expert in a subject matter within days.
It is simple. Find out what people are interested in, and make it your niche. Read up on it, market it, and you are good to go. You don’t have to have any significant real-life experiences on the subject, you just need to know a little bit more than your audience. If that.
I took some of these courses, the allure of free is hard to avoid, and, honestly, I even enjoyed some, but to what purpose, to what end?
Yes, I like learning new things, I am attracted by the new shiny objects just as much as any other multipotentialite out there, but the quality has worsened over the years (this is not just the pandemic outcome) and what worries me is that I hardly even noticed.
I kept on taking the webinars. I kept on signing up for email lists offering me free email courses or free downloads. It was like the Pinterest of learning, the allure of promises without any substantial content.
The Machine Stops
In the “The Machine Stops” people are controlled by…well.. the Machine. They live underground. The Machine provides them with everything they need, provided they stay compliant with the rules of the Machine. They live in their rooms, and they meet occasionally in person but they see each other through the machine wherever in the world they are.
(It still gets me that video calls/instant messaging were predicted as something regular over 100 years ago!)
People pass their time mainly by listening to lectures and discussing ideas and concepts which are largely irrelevant to their confined lives.
As an example of irrelevance, our main character prepares lectures on Australian Opera. Everyone can pick a topic and prepare a lecture. People then listen to lectures from the comfort of their rooms. Then they discuss it as if it was the most important thing in the world.
I was feeling thoroughly unproductive during the Covid19 lockdown. It seemed like the whole world was doing something important in their homes. Learning a new language, a new skill, cooking, crafting, coding or coming up with witty things to post online.
I picked up the novella I had already read, but this time the message really stood out. Consider this excerpt:
“As for Vashti, her life went peacefully forward until the final disaster. She made her room dark and slept; she awoke and made the room light. She lectured and attended lectures. She exchanged ideas with her innumerable friends and believed she was growing more spiritual.”
Forster, E. M.. The Machine Stops (p. 28). IAP. Kindle Edition.
The creepy world of E.M. Forster became even creepier by the fact that, at that very moment, I and the many of my fellow humans were actually living it.
Takeaways
I asked myself about the significance of it all. What is the point? What do we do with the influx of information, of influencers, of following trends, of watching yet another youtube how to video?
Are we just trying to pass our time until the final disaster?
Or are we living?
E.M. Forster’s magnificent ability to see the future aside, I hope that my innumerable online friends and I refuse to be Vashti.
I certainly hope that some of us have actually lived and learned the real lessons from what we are trying to convey to others. That we connect on that level. With purpose and quality.