I just discovered this today. It's a science fiction short story of an extraordinarly distopian sort, written in 1909 by E.M. Forster.
It takes place in an imagined future when everyone's needs are taken care of by a giant world-wide machine. While great airships still exist, travel is increasingly rare. Since everywhere on Earth is exactly like every other place, why go anywhere? Everyone lives alone in their own personal cell-like room underground where the machine supplies them with everything they want. (And what people are capable of wanting is increasingly limited to what the machine provides.) They rarely if ever feel any desire to leave their rooms. (The idea of doing so scares them.) But they feel that they are always in touch with everything important because they have their... screens! Screens that give them access to all the information they desire (less and less) and permitting them to communicate instantly with anyone on Earth. (Forster's 1909 vision of cell-phone zombies, social media and the Internet!) There's really just one book that's vital in their world, the Book of the Machine, that explains how to work the keyboard in every cell to get whatever they want. Some of them have begun praying to the Book of the Machine in moments of need, bowing before it and consider it a holy text. (The Machine provides all, right?) Communication is dying just as travel did, since what's the point of talking to strangers if one has nothing to say? People spend their time staring at the walls of their cells, but feel disturbed and bothered when others call on their screens. While everyone is constantly in touch, nobody physically touches any longer, doing so is considered horribly gross. While the airships still have windows from the time when people still gazed out, the windows are always shuttered now because nobody is interested any longer. There's a scene where the shutter moves a crack exposing one of the story's two protagonists with her pasty white death-like skin to an incredibly bright ray of light... a ray of sunlight. She recoils and touches a stranger whose reaction is: "How dare you??"
One of the most famous passages in the story, featuring what pass as intellectuals in that age, reminded me of MR in the lion's den (... that other place). [Highlighting by me]:
Beware of first-hand ideas!" exclaimed one of the most advanced of them. "First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by love and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element --- direct observation... But be sure that the intermediates are many and varied, for in history one authority exists to counteract another... You who listen to me are in a better position to judge about the French Revolution than I am. Your descendants will be even in a better position than you, for they will learn what you think I think, and yet another intermediate will be added to the chain. And in time" --- his voice rose --- "there will come a generation that has got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colourless, a generation seraphically free from the taint of personality!"
Here's the story:
https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/O...-Stops.pdf
It really looks like an inspiration for Aldus Huxley's Brave New World. And more directly George Lucas' TXH 1138. There's also a certain hint of French poststructuralism to it, with reality dismissed in favor of texts. interpreted by other texts, interpreted by... in an infinite regress of Derridian 'differance'.
Here's a little essay about it.
http://henryoarnold.com/beware-of-first-hand-ideas/
.
It takes place in an imagined future when everyone's needs are taken care of by a giant world-wide machine. While great airships still exist, travel is increasingly rare. Since everywhere on Earth is exactly like every other place, why go anywhere? Everyone lives alone in their own personal cell-like room underground where the machine supplies them with everything they want. (And what people are capable of wanting is increasingly limited to what the machine provides.) They rarely if ever feel any desire to leave their rooms. (The idea of doing so scares them.) But they feel that they are always in touch with everything important because they have their... screens! Screens that give them access to all the information they desire (less and less) and permitting them to communicate instantly with anyone on Earth. (Forster's 1909 vision of cell-phone zombies, social media and the Internet!) There's really just one book that's vital in their world, the Book of the Machine, that explains how to work the keyboard in every cell to get whatever they want. Some of them have begun praying to the Book of the Machine in moments of need, bowing before it and consider it a holy text. (The Machine provides all, right?) Communication is dying just as travel did, since what's the point of talking to strangers if one has nothing to say? People spend their time staring at the walls of their cells, but feel disturbed and bothered when others call on their screens. While everyone is constantly in touch, nobody physically touches any longer, doing so is considered horribly gross. While the airships still have windows from the time when people still gazed out, the windows are always shuttered now because nobody is interested any longer. There's a scene where the shutter moves a crack exposing one of the story's two protagonists with her pasty white death-like skin to an incredibly bright ray of light... a ray of sunlight. She recoils and touches a stranger whose reaction is: "How dare you??"
One of the most famous passages in the story, featuring what pass as intellectuals in that age, reminded me of MR in the lion's den (... that other place). [Highlighting by me]:
Beware of first-hand ideas!" exclaimed one of the most advanced of them. "First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by love and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element --- direct observation... But be sure that the intermediates are many and varied, for in history one authority exists to counteract another... You who listen to me are in a better position to judge about the French Revolution than I am. Your descendants will be even in a better position than you, for they will learn what you think I think, and yet another intermediate will be added to the chain. And in time" --- his voice rose --- "there will come a generation that has got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colourless, a generation seraphically free from the taint of personality!"
Here's the story:
https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/O...-Stops.pdf
It really looks like an inspiration for Aldus Huxley's Brave New World. And more directly George Lucas' TXH 1138. There's also a certain hint of French poststructuralism to it, with reality dismissed in favor of texts. interpreted by other texts, interpreted by... in an infinite regress of Derridian 'differance'.
Here's a little essay about it.
http://henryoarnold.com/beware-of-first-hand-ideas/
.