Friday, May 13, 2011

Friday the 13th - The Machine Stops

Many of us are still "recovering" (in cyberspace) from the massive Blogger outage of yesteday....Friday the 13th a day early.

I am a science fiction fan, although I read a lot less than I did in college, in my 20's, in my 30's.

There is a story called The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster which made a very big impact on me at a young age.  By the technology of the Internet I share it through the link in the previous sentence - if Blogger stays "up", that is.

It wasn't until years after reading it for the first time that I discovered that this story was written in.....1909.

Fellow Blogathoners, on this Friday the 13th, I invite you to read this story.  Not just for the technology it predicts (not the Internet, but that's not really important) but for what it shows us.

That is true Science Fiction in action.  Stories that make us think.

It's scary the way not having Blogger in the middle of a Blogathon affected me.  And the Internet has only been around for a fraction of my life.  How would my young adult son react?

If our general technology ever crashed....how would we as a society react?

Please read this story.

1 comment:

  1. As a Sci-Fi buff I enjoyed re-reading this story after many many years. As a technology addicted/dependent person it amplifies a point I have made in many conversations over the years. I believe that this is one of the reasons I enjoy living in the country. I can at least get outside and enjoy the real world.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for visiting! Your comments mean a lot to me, and I appreciate each one. These comments are moderated, so they may not post for several hours. If you are spam, you will find your comments in my compost heap, where they will finally serve a good purpose.