E.M. Forster: Bit Rot

Humanity is isolated for their own safety in their homes, but they settle in to communicate through world-wide messaging and video calls, and face-to-face, person-to-person interaction becomes rarer and rarer, to the point that it's uncomfortable and awkward.

And no, the writer had no knowledge of the year 2020. E. M. Forster's prescient work of science fiction was first published in 1909.

After an ecological disaster, humanity is forced to flee underground, living alone in pods. But...it's not uncomfortable. In fact, it's the opposite. Humans have everything they could possibly need or want, thanks to the machine that oversees everything. But, when we give the power to watch over us to computers, who watches over the computers?

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The original: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops/Chapter_I

 

 

 

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Warning: spoilers

 

A character struggles with loneliness and depression and tries numerous times to have the machine painlessly euthanize her, but it refuses.