golisreads 's review for:

The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster

5.0

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Prophetic! Reading this today made me chill to my core. I had to constantly remind myself that this was written in the 1920s and NOT recently. Forester describes not only technologies like the internet or video conferencing, but also the impact on the human condition as we withdraw more and more to our own safe bubbles. Throughout the book Forester refers to "direct experience anxiety". What an accurate description. This as the result of someone used to experience life mostly through technology and isolated in a small space and then returning to a new normal life, like finding ourselves suddenly anxious near people at the grocery store when this was such a mundane activity of the near past. I was utterly marveled by the mind of E.M. Forester. I'm so much hoping our civilization has a better future than the one described in the book.

I'll be thinking about this book for many days.