Study Guide as Circulated in Original
The Machine Stops
Reading Group Guidelines
https://www.canterbury-cathedral.org/the-machine-stops/
Introductory Note
Over a century ago, when World War I was yet to happen, E.M. Forster wrote The Machine Stops. He predicted a future scenario not unlike that in which we find ourselves today. Forster's portrayal of the ultimate end of technological progress coupled with apathetic materialism is deceptively easy to read. Like all his writing, however, it is beautifully crafted,
According to Wikipedia, the Fantasy Book Review calls The Machine Stops "dystopic and quite brilliant" and says "In such a short novel The Machine Stops holds more horror than any number of gothic ghost stories. Everybody should read it, and consider how far we may go ourselves down the road of technological ‘advancement’ and forget what it truly means to be alive." and rates it as 10 out of 10.
The story is "a chilling tale of a futuristic information-oriented society that grinds to a bloody halt, literally. Some aspects of the story no longer seem so distant in the future." A lecturer in the story provides "a chilling premonition of the George W. Bush administration's derogation of "the reality-based community". (If you have no idea what George W. Bush's administration might have suggested, you can look it up on the internet.)
When I first studied The Machine Stops as a student in the 60s it made very little sense. Video-conferencing, the internet and Artificial Intelligence were still way into the future. By 2020 Will Gompertz could observe: "The Machine Stops is not simply prescient; it is a jaw-droppingly, gob-smackingly, breath-takingly accurate literary description of lockdown life in 2020.
Forster's short story is a gift to today's concerned parent, home-maker, artist, farmer and citizen. It raises every subject of concern today, from care of the land, care of the child, mental and physical health, respect for the arts, nature, to the spiritual life. Above all, he provides a platform for opening up debate on the crucial issue of the role of finance in determining civic rights and responsibilities.
The question is - is it logically inevitable that technological progress will produce a society that cannot sustain itself?
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STUDY DOCUMENT 1
by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam (below)
"AI can't replace empathy that makes us all human"
Catholic Universe, 5 Feb 2021
by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
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See also: https://www.canterbury-cathedral.org/the-machine-stops/
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Preparation
The first task is to read the story through at least a couple of times - there is so much hidden in each phrase and sentence. Note points you would like to explore. Obviously, the scenario Forster presents is totally unworkable. No human society could function with individuals living in total isolation from each other and from nature. Nevertheless, as Forster so uncannily foretold, that is the way things are going. And if so, it will indeed grind "to a bloody halt".
Forster's scenario is unworkable because the cultural sphere has been denied resources and eliminated by the political and economic spheres working hand in hand. (See eg "Towards a Threefold Commonwealth", New View 98, Winter 2020-2021, and elsewhere in these texts.)
Study Guide Part 2
For Reading Groups and Individuals
WEEK 1: Introductions:
By way of introduction to the sense of time and place, it may be helpful to share with the group where one or more of your grandparents grew up.
The Machine Stops was published in 1909, and has remained in print ever since. What do you know about the 1909 local economy of the city, town or village where you are now living?
WEEK 2: The Airship
Part I of the story provides an overview of the world political economy.
WEEK 3: The Mending Apparatus
Part I of the story explores the history of humanity and shows how the Machine developed the ability to control its inmates.
WEEK 4: The Homeless
Part III explores the apathy of the culturally and spiritually deprived inhabitants of the Machine. Hope lies in those humans living in the real world.
WEEK 5: Conclusions
If this was a useful exercise, where might it lead/ how might it be developed?
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WEEK 2: The Airship
(Suggested discussion points)
The following phrases and sentences could trigger discussion of the context from which it is taken and its relationship to present-day concerns. Each topic would lend itself to further study.
Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape like the cell of a bee.
Forster's short story is packed full with sentences that are, like this one, laden with meaning. A beehive is a complex mechanism that runs like clockwork. Each bee has its 'cell', its place in the overall scheme of things. It has its tasks to perform, but no idea how the whole system runs, or what its purpose might be. The individual merely performs its allotted tasks, following the rules and regulations, asking no fundamental questions. Yet, as every child and bee-keeper knows, adult bees do not live in cells.
..a swaddled lump of flesh ... with a face as white as a fungus.
The room is said to 'belong' to this unhealthy specimen of humanity. Ownership implies some degree of control. To what extent can Vashti, the character presented here, be said to 'own' her cell? And how realistic is it that such a creature could survive physically and mentally?
An electric bell rang.
Considered in the context of Part 1 of the story, the sentence is brim full of meaning. Electricity had yet to be commonplace in households (as were bathrooms and running water). In 1909 most homes were lit by fire and candle light. Music came out of voices and instruments, recorded voices and music were still regarded as bordering on the unnatural. Telegraph and telephones could convey messages across long distances, but the apparatus was not commonly available in households. A bell was normally a metal object rung for the purpose of summoning a servant in a wealthy household.
"Oh, hush! ... You mustn't say anything against the Machine."
Vashti is entirely taken up within the life of the artificial, man-made world of Machine. Kuno, on the other hand, wishes to speak "face to face", and not through "the wearisome Machine." What do you think is going on here? What is each character thinking?
There were buttons to call for food, for music, for clothing...etc.
In 1909 the sources of one's food and other subsistence needs were transparent to all citizens, as were the sources of information and entertainment. Supermarkets and TV were two world wars away, and on-line ordering was inconceivable. Do we know any better than Vashti and Kuno how our last meal travelled from soil to household, on what land, and through whose labour, did it materialise?
The imponderable bloom ...
The Machine rightly ignores the 'imponderable bloom' on the grape and face-to-face, direct communication between people. Is it truly "something good enough" that has "long since been accepted by our race"?
...irritation - a growing quality in that accelerated age.
The "clumsy system of public gatherings" has been replaced by instant communications. This has, as Forster predicted, caused an incredible increase in the pace of life. But to what end? Vashti has no time even to arrange to pay a flying visit to the 'public nurseries ... say this day month'. The suggestion here is that her latest infant is in the nurseries. The ruling P.422327483 of the Machine declares that "parents, duties of, ... cease at the moment of birth".
"Kuno ...I am not well."
The remark triggers an immediate response. Vashti has no say in the matter as medical care is dispensed through a robot. Nevertheless, "the human passions still blundered up and down the Machine".
What was the good of going to Pekin when it was just like Shrewsbury?
In 1909 the "air-ship service" was yet to be developed. Yet Forster portrayed it as a relic of the past, when people sought to see the world through direct experience. For the inhabitants of the machine, direct experience and person-to-person contact have become obsolete. Vashti is the only person travelling from personal choice. Her fellow travellers are being taken to the rooms allotted to them by the Machine, or to some mysterious clinic "for the purpose of propagating the race".
... and the Committee of the Machine, at the time rising into prominence, declared the pursuit illegal, unmechanical, and punishable by Homelessness.
The scenario presented here is by no means as inconceivable now as it was before World War I. Then, laws could not have been 'declared' by a Central Committee. Now, we are all in constant danger of breaking a new law declared as we sleep.
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STUDY DOCUMENT
AI can't replace empathy that makes us all human
Catholic Universe, 5 Feb 2021
by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
At the heart of the development of Artificial Intelligence (Al) appears to be a search for perfection. And it could be just as dangerous to humanity as the one that came from philosophical and pseudoscientific ideas of the 19th and early 20th centuries and led to the horrors of colonialism, world war and the Holocaust. Instead of a human ruling "master race", we could end up with a machine one.
If this seems extreme, consider the anti-human perfectionism that is already central to the labour market. Here, Al technology is the next step in the premise of maximum productivity that replaces individual craftmanship with the factory production line. These massive changes in productivity and the way we work created opportunities and threats that are now set to be compounded by a 'fourth industrial revolution in which AI replaces human workers.
Several recent research papers predict that, within a decade, automation will replace half of the current jobs. In this transition to a new digitised economy, many people will lose their livelihoods. Even if we assume that this new industrial revolution will engender a new work force that is able to navigate and command this data-dominated world, we will still have to face major socio-economic problems. The disruptions will be immense and need to be scrutinised.
The ultimate aim of Al, even narrow AI which handles very specific tasks, is to outdo and perfect every human cognitive function. Eventually, machine-learning systems may well be programmed to be better than humans at everything.
What they may never develop,however, is the human touch — empathy, love, hate or any of the other self-conscious emotions that make us human. That's unless we ascribe these sentiments to them, which is what some of us are already doing with our 'Alexas' and 'Siris'.
The obsession with perfection and 'hyper-efficiency' has had a profound impact on human relations, even human reproduction, as people live their lives in cloistered, virtual realities of their own making. For instance, several US and China based companies have produced robotic dolls that are selling out fast as substitute partners.
One man in China even married his cyber-doll, while a woman in France 'married' a `robo-man' and is campaigning to legalise her marriage."I'm really happy," she said. "Our relationship will get better and better as technology evolves." There seems to be high demand for robot wives and husbands all over the world.
In the perfectly productive world, humans would be accounted as worthless, certainly in terms of productivity but also in terms of our feeble humanity Unless we jettison this perfectionist attitude towards life that positions productivity and 'material growth' above sustainability and individual happiness, Al research could be another chain in the history of self-defeating human inventions.
Already we are witnessing discrimination in algorithmic calculations. Recently, a popular South Korean chatbot named Lee Luda was taken offline. 'She' was modelled after the persona of a 20-year-old female university student and was removed from Facebook messenger after using hate speech towards LGBT people.
Meanwhile, automated weapons programmed to kill are carrying maxims such as 'productivity' and 'efficiency' into battle. As a result, war has become more sustainable. The proliferation of drone warfare is a very vivid. example of these new forms of conflict. They create a virtual reality that is almost absent from our grasp.
But it would be comical to depict Al as an inevitable Orwellian nightmare of an army of super-intelligent 'Terminators' whose mission is to erase the human race. Such dystopian predictions are too crude to capture the basics of Al and its impact on our everyday existence.
Societies can benefit from Al if it is developed with sustainable economic development and human security in mind. The confluence of power and Al which is pursuing, for example, systems of control and surveillance, should not substitute for the promise of a humanised AI that puts machine learning technology in the service of humans and not the other way around.
To that end, the AI-human interfaces that are quickly opening up in prisons, healthcare, government, social security and border control, for example, must be regulated to favour ethics and human security over institutional efficiency. The social sciences and humanities have a lot to say about such issues.
One thing to be cheerful about is the likelihood that Al will never be a substitute for human philosophy and intellectuality. To be a philosopher, after all, requires empathy, an understanding of humanity, and our innate emotions and motives. If we can programme our machines to understand such ethical standards, then AI research has the capacity to improve our lives which should be the ultimate aim of any technological advance.
But if Al research yields a new ideology centred around the notion of perfectionism and maximum productivity, then it will be a destructive force that will lead to more wars, more famines and more social and economic distress, especially for the poor. At this juncture of global history, this choice is still ours.
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is a Professor in Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies, SOAS, University of London.
END
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