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Our Media, Ourselves: Are We Headed For A Matrix? : NPRThe title of Forster’s story, remember is The Machine Stops; it’s about overreliance on devices. But as in most dystopias, technology and the sleek sterile chill of modernity are stand-ins for the real culprit. Our anxiety is primordial — given voice in literature and art since whenever it was that people first gathered together. In caves maybe.
Once you’ve felt the comfort of society, you worry about losing it. So to remind yourself of how you’re connected, you gather things around. And you cling to them, not so you won’t lose them, or lose what makes you you, but so you won’t lose the connections they represent. The fear is of emptiness — but of emptiness inside us, not of empty rooms.
