The machine stops... Lockdown 100 years ago..

I just spotted this on the news site, downloaded the story and read it. It's a story of life lived in physical isolation, interaction is via the machine...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52821993

Amazing that this was imagined 100 years ago.

Enjoy!

:D

Certainly prescient in the core concepts of what we have now.

The industrial revolution and Victorian enterprise stimulated much speculation about the future and IMO that book definitely falls into that category :)
 
I came across Forster's story in the 1960s and thought it was rather silly then. Quickly running through it now I can see that it's an early variant of the disaster movie. To quote Bob Dylan “I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours”.
 
The opening scene setting paragraphs caught me. How 100 years ago did someone imagine that in the future we'd have zero physical interaction but thousands of friends we communicate with via technology, light, air and music in a sealed room, incoming calls, an isolation knob and screen based interaction with another on the other side of the world?

Why would we ever want to go outside or visit someone?
 
I've heard of this, but hadn't read it. Prescient, indeed.

1984 (Orwell) was published about 70 years ago, and is also proving disturbingly far sighted...
 
1984 has found it's way into lots of popular culture but some have no idea why we have "Big Brother" or "Room 101." The concept of double think, thought police and the revision of history are probably well known now. All that's missing are fake news and internet panics, mix those in and it'd pretty much sum up life today.

And a PS.
I've at least looked at passages from "The machine stops" a few times a day since I downloaded and read it.
 
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How 100 years ago did someone imagine that in the future...
If you read as much old science fiction as I have from that period it becomes clear that many of these ideas were in circulation much earlier than 1900. By the 1850s Britain was in the midst of the industrial revolution and new inventions were being described pretty much every day. The first image transmission system was demonstrated in 1843 by Alexander Bain (who also invented, among other things, an electric clock) and Louis Le Prince demonstrated a practical motion picture system in 1888. Hence the idea that there might be moving images transmitted in the same way was fairly common before Forster thought of it, as were most of his other ideas.
 
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There's stories with future tech but I think it's a pretty good jump to imagine a world where people don't leave their room, control everything via tech and interact with thousands via tech including an isolation knob cutting everyone out except the person you want to talk to. I've read stories with future tech but not anything quite like that before.
 
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