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01 Jul 2008 08:33 pm
Only Connect
E.M. Forster got to Wall-E's message a long time ago:
As in WALL-E, “The Machine Stops” is set on a future Earth
whose surface has been blasted into inhabitability by waste and
pollution. Writing when radio was in its infancy, Forster (best known
for his novel A Passage to India) imagined an intermediated
hypercivilization in which people connect to one another through
electronic screens—a videoconferencing dystopia unnervingly reminiscent
of some of today’s social media. While WALL-E’s human
population has escaped into space, in Forster’s tale they have created
a vast subterranean civilization. In both stories, however, humanity
has grown fat and sessile thanks to automated systems that serve their
every need. Whisked from screen to screen in automated chairs, they’re
unable to interact with the world without electronic mediation. And in
both stories, the systems break down.
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