Vote Dystopian

As many will know, "The Machine Stops" referred to in an earlier post here is a science fiction story by E. M. Forster published in 1909. Usually said to depict a dystopian, machine-based future, I've read it twice, once years ago and again more recently. A Wikipedia description and an excerpt are given below.


From Wikipedia

The story describes a world in which most of the human population has lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth. Each individual now lives in isolation below ground in a standard room, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine. Travel is permitted, but is unpopular and rarely necessary. Communication is made via a kind of instant messaging/video conferencing machine with which people conduct their only activity: the sharing of ideas and what passes for knowledge.

The two main characters, Vashti and her son Kuno, live on opposite sides of the world. Vashti is content with her life, which, like most inhabitants of the world, she spends producing and endlessly discussing secondhand 'ideas'. Her son Kuno, however, is a sensualist and a rebel. He persuades a reluctant Vashti to endure the journey (and the resultant unwelcome personal interaction) to his room. There, he tells her of his disenchantment with the sanitised, mechanical world.

To my mind, the fascination is that many people such as the character Vashti clearly do not see their Machine existence as dystopian - they have adapted to it. How many people today are voting, step by step, for a modern version of E. M. Forster's Machine because each step is viewed as not at all dystopian? Especially with a few promotional tweaks. 

A description of Vashti's room from the book -

Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk - that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh - a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs…

For a moment Vashti felt lonely. Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere- buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.

The last sentence is is one modern readers probably understand more easily that Forster's Edwardian readers - The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world. How many voters are voting for something trending in that direction?