Q & A: Do dystopian Stories like "The Machine Stops" have value to modern readers?

 Dystopian stories are often inspired by the author’s fear of how changes in their world that they are uncomfortable with will ultimately result in society’s undoing. In reality, I believe that it is far more common for technology to be seamlessly integrated into our world without horrifying side-effects, and as such, we should not put too much weight in one author’s pessimistic view of a future they do not recognize. As such, I often have little patience for apocalyptic or dystopian literature. Too often, stories like “The Machine Stops” (or Brave New World, or 1984, or any of the plentiful other examples of this style) cause modern-day readers to marvel at how much the author correctly predicted, thereby leading us to irrational fears that the world depicted in the tale is not far off. One passage of “The Machine Stops” that exemplifies this trend is Forester’s frightened depiction of Vashti’s lecture where “neither [she] nor her audience stirred from their rooms.” True, the teleconferencing that Forester is referencing is ubiquitous in today’s society - however, this technological advancement did not accompany a societal shift into solitary cells.  Far from the isolation that “The Machine Stops” anticipated, teleconferencing technology conveniently connects people across the globe. 2020 was an isolating year - imagine how bad it would have been if we’d heeded Forster’s warnings about Zoom. 

Forster’s fear of the Machine was not the only key anxiety he conveyed in this short story - he also appears concerned that the newly-arrived technological age will rob humanity of all our individuality, turning us into mindless drones living identical lives. This fear is reflected in several ways in “The Machine Stops” - everybody across the world lives contently in identical cubicles, they all listen to similar lectures, original ideas that do not fit with the Machine’s favored worldview are frowned upon, and everybody shares the same religion and value system. This concern, along with angst about handing our lives over to machines, was not uncommon in the barely-post-industrial age of the early 1900s. Huxley’s Brave New World and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, among others, both reflect the concern that urbanization and industrialization create legions of identical humans without original thoughts or opinions. From our modern-day perspective, it is clear that these fears simply did not come to pass. Though we live in cities and have access to technology, we each obviously have our own lives, interests, and passions that shine in stark contrast to Forster’s nightmare world. 

Other dystopian stories share Forster’s over-cataclysmic outlook - while many of their predictions have come true, they were not accompanied by the societal downfall that the authors expected. As we speak, Big Brother is watching us - and without him, I wouldn’t be able to navigate anywhere outside of Champaign-Urbana. Boston Dynamics’ real-life manifestation of Fahrenheit 451’s mechanical dog is named Spot, and it helps us scan construction sites so our buildings are safer. We can read the human genome, which worried Huxley in Brave New World, but we use the technology to recognize and treat genetic diseases. In each of these instances, listening to an author’s pessimistic warnings about how technology will lead to our destruction would have kept us from innovations that are at worst benign, and at best actively benefiting society. As such, I do not feel that dystopian literature is worth hyper-analyzing in the search for what the author correctly predicted, because these stories are more reflective of our predecessors’ fear of change than they are legitimate concerns about the future of our society. I hope that the same is true for dystopian and apocalyptic stories written today - I truly expect humanity to one day solve the climate crisis (as we’ve solved so many other crises), and I expect that our ecological apocalypses will one day strike future readers with the same skepticism that accompanies our study of “The Machine Stops.” 

Despite their unrealistically pessimistic attitude, these stories still have worth beyond their entertainment value - they are historical artifacts. I believe that, instead of marveling at an author’s foresight and worrying about their concerns, modern analysis of century-old dystopian literature should seek to highlight the reasoning behind their worries. In the case of “The Machine Stops” and other anti-technology stories from the early 20th century, the authors were afraid of the rapid change they had witnessed during their lifetimes. As the world shifted from predominantly rural and agrarian to urban and industrial, people like Forster were terrified of what they did not understand, leading them to create works warning people about too quickly progressing into a world they no longer recognized. In retrospect, these fears appear absurd - it is this same technological advancement, for instance, that improved the average lifespan in the United States by a staggering 30 years during the 20th century. Recognizing the pessimism of old authors helps us understand the concerns, however unrealistic, that plagued people of the past. These stories also help us note the progress that we’ve made because, despite Forster’s warnings, we innovated anyway.