Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Melanie Smith on E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops"

“"Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops--but not on our lies. 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. Oh, I have no remedy--or, at least, only one--to tell men again and again that I have seen the hills of Wessex as Alfrid saw them when he overthrew the Danes” (13-14).

Far flung from the hopeful world Hiroshi Yamamoto would write about nearly 100 years later, E.M. Forster paints a bleak picture of humanity’s future with technology. 

In 1909, when The Machine Stops was first published, technology was a much different matter than it is today. Radio technology was still in its infancy.  The telephone was still relatively new, with Alexander Graham Bell having patented it only 33 years prior. The historic flight of the Wright Brothers had only occurred a mere 6 years before. It’s interesting to keep in mind what technologies Forster was surrounded with when writing this bleak tale of technology killing humanity. He did not need supercomputers and ubiquitous networking to feel fear for the coming future. 

Forster is arguing that technology is seeking to remove us from the natural world, stripping humans of their very humanity. Human contact, love, and direct experience are all being stripped away in favor of the mechanical. This seems like a fear of becoming Transhuman; the fear that if humanity starts to augment itself with technology, it will become something altogether different and alien. 

The term “transhumanism” was first coined in 1957 by Sir Julian Huxley, an evolutionary biologist and humanist, and brother of the science-fiction writer Aldous Huxley. When he coined the term, he envisioned it as a way for humanity to better itself through science and technology. He left open the possibility that eugenics may be one way to approach this, but transhumanism has since come to refer to any science that may help humans better themselves. 

This is something that The Machine Stops is on the border of, but since the idea had not come to fruition yet, the story stops short of invoking transhumanism. The humans in The Machine Stops are completely cocooned by technology from birth to death, which in its own way can still be seen as transhumanism. They are, after all, using technology to better the lives of the people, at least in the common person’s point of view. However, technology has not become a part of their physical bodies, and does not seem to have augmented their bodies in any way, as we normally think of transhumans.

The question I would like to ask is “Does becoming a transhuman make you less human?” One could argue about the true meaning of “human,” but the question could be rephrased “Does becoming transhuman cause the individual to lose certain traits, generally ascribed to humanity at large, that would hinder them?”  Kuno certainly seems to think so, when he makes the speech above to his mother, Vashti.

Kuno makes it very clear that he believes that humanity is dying because of its dependence on the Machine. Humans no longer touch each other now, as is shown in the scenes where Vashti is on her trip in the airships. She is outright appalled when the flight attended reaches to steady her and keep her from falling. Kuno also drives home this tendency when he talks about the Machine “narrow[ing] down love to a carnal act.” We do not hear much about reproduction in this story, other than the fact that one must apply to become a parent, and that upon birth a parent’s responsibilities are officially over. In short, even the process of falling in love, marriage, and bearing children has now been eliminated and mechanized. There is no more need for love, and perhaps not even sex, in the new mechanized world. 

Furthermore, Kuno believes that humanity is now nothing more than “blood corpuscles,” serving as part of the Machine as a way to keep it going rather than the other way around, similar to how humanity is treated in The Matrix. Humans created machines to serve them, but now they are simply the fuel that sustains them.

In this speech, Kuno references the lecturers, the people within the society who study various subjects and transmit their speeches to others. This group of the population is fascinating enough on its own, and, at points, seems deserving of Kuno’s criticisms. From observing Vashti, we can see that she is very far removed from the real world (the planet’s surface, ocean, stars, etc.) though her fellow lecturers are not all as such. She references that some of the lecturers do get permits to explore the outside land or the ocean to further their knowledge on the subject. While it’s not illegal, Vashti makes it clear that is not something “spiritually minded people do” (10). Her reaction seems like it is most likely not isolated to her, and may be something that is widely accepted from the academic community. Later, when travel outside of the Machine becomes forbidden, most do not find this distressing. In fact, it causes one lecturer to give a speech about how first-hand knowledge is not needed, but also not preferable. “Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element--direct observation.” (16). This point of view, however, is in stark contrast to Kuno’s speech, as he believes the only way to restore humanity is to tell them of his exploits on the hills of Wessex. On one side, direct experience is condemned, and on the other direct experience is the only way to become truly human. 

The artifact I would like to bring in then is the webcomic The Dresden Codak; specifically the Hob storyline. The storyline starts with this comic:  http://dresdencodak.com/2007/02/08/pom/. I highly recommend everyone read the whole comic, especially those interested in transhumanism, futurism, or just science and philosophy. However, I’m going to point out two specific comic strips from the Hob series. The first is “Metropolis” http://dresdencodak.com/2007/09/21/metropolis/. Not to give away too much of the plot, this strip explains things that happen in the future (or rather an alternate future) relative to the time of the main plot. They explain that humans created technology to meet all of their needs, and soon they became dependent on it and grew unable to understand it, as the humans did in The Machine Stops. Unlike them, however, in this future world they had the transhumans, humans that had integrated machines into their body, and were able to speak the machine language and act as intermediaries. As far as those that were not augmented were concerned, the machines turned against them, and the resulting war destroyed the mother computer and left the world in ruins. 

The next strip I’d like to bring up is “Eloi” http://dresdencodak.com/2008/06/07/eloi/. It explains the story from a transhuman point of view. The humans are coming to beg for their problems to be solved, but the transhuman alludes to the fact that humans are dying out anyway. It’s clear though that everything she says goes straight over the human’s heads, especially when one utters, “Who is homosapiens? I don’t understand.” The chilling part of this strip, though, is when the transhuman dismisses the humans with the cold line, “We can give you anything you want. Save relevance.”

The transhuman in “Eloi” may seem cold and uncaring, but from her point of view humanity has reduced her role to that of a glorified babysitter. Think back to the strip “Metropolis” where the story was told from the point of view of the human survivors who destroyed the machines. Think about how they refer to the transhumans. They say that they “sacrificed their humanity” and that their only role was to “ensure that the ever-expanding net still served humanity.” It shows that the common human did not view the transhumans as one of them, and only saw them as another way that the machines would serve them. Not only does that not seem fair, it does not seem to be how the transhuman in “Eloi” would see herself.  

With both works, The Machine Stops and The Dreden Codak’s “Hob,” we see two differing points of view on transhumanity. In The Machine Stops, transhumanity is commonly viewed as a good thing as people even begin to worship the Machine that gives them everything they could need. In “Hob,” people still enjoy what machines can do for them, but those that bridge the gap into transhumanity are seen as giving up something, to become mere servants to the “real” humans. Both situations end in the destruction of the world. 

However, the question I asked earlier is still valid: Does becoming a transhuman make one less human? Putting aside the destruction of the world for a moment, the people in The Machine Stops had large advantages in technology. It seemed that sickness, hunger, and poverty had all been eliminated, except of course for those who were exiled. Their society had lost a lot of what we, and Kuno, might describe as humanity; love, sense of adventure, etc. all seemed to be missing in the humans of that age. But does that make them worse off than people of today? One could argue that love and adventure are dangerous or potential harmful concepts, and perhaps they are worth trading for technology that could end starvation and other problems. 

As for the transhumans in “Hob,” they are obviously mentally superior to their human counterparts, and likely superior in other ways such as physical strength. They were able to understand the changes that were going on in the evolution of their people, and saw that humans were becoming outdated. The cold and callous way that they treated the humans may seem inhumane, but humanity is obviously capable of similar callousness. For whatever reason, people of today often to prefer not to think about poverty, sickness, and starvation going on in other countries. The cold manner of the transhumans is not far flung from that. 

The end of “Hob” has a more positive outcome than The Machine Stops, insinuating that both man and machine are needed in order for the two to advance to something greater. In a way, this could also be taken from The Machine Stops; the Machine could not run all by itself, and ultimately needed human’s help in order for both to continue co-existing. The difference between the two works is that in The Machine Stops, humanity never got the chance to work past its ignorance and work in true partnership with the Machine.

Personally, I think humanity can only benefit from the pursuit of science, and using what we learn from science to better the lives of people. Certainly, technological advances can cause us to lose certain traits. Even now, we see diseases like obesity linked with new technologies like television and internet as people begin to have less reason to leave their homes for entertainment or information. But the internet is a valuable tool for knowledge and communication, something that most people would not give up for anything. Some would argue that a connection to nature is essential to humanity; farming, hunting, etc. was a way of life for all of our ancestors, though now a much smaller group participates in these activities. Society at large no longer has to work for our food. We have been disconnected from something that was very closely tied to the life of all people in the past, and that disconnect could be seen as a loss for humanity. But to me, it seems we’ve gained more than anything we may have lost. The average person may have no idea the work that goes into bringing food to the supermarkets, but I don’t think that makes them disconnected from the human condition. If anything, this allows people to open up to new ways to be human, new ways to express ideas and live life. But if The Machine Stops is teaching us anything, it is that we can’t become too disconnected from the knowledge of these vital roots, or our society could crumble just as easily.


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