So changes in lifestyle indeed have occurred, and the main one being that people basically need not ever to leave the comfort of their own home! Video telephone calls are available, so it is possible to call people and see them visually during the conversation – but therefore, in this world Forster has created, no one really ever sees anyone face to face, up close and personal. This seems negligible though, but it actually leads onto much greater consequences. People in this world are now haunted by the “terrors of direct experience” and direct experiences are things that are simply bound to happen sometime in life! However, now people have grown unaccustomed to it, so even a simple handshake is considered as shockingly barbaric. “People never touched one another,” Forster writes. Human beings are no longer used to seeing expressions on people’s faces, as they simply do not require to go out of their homes and make acquaintances. They have everything they need in their rooms and so never leave! “[Their rooms], though [they] contained nothing, [were] in touch with all that [they] cared for in the world,” Forster writes. The rooms are also all identical, small and “hexagonal in shape.” This just seems so frighteningly isolated. The image created is that of a lonely life, and in the world we live in today, that is considered to be fairly scary.
Also, this brings in the fact that the Earth in this world is the same all over. So therefore life under The Machine has its own problems. Life is so regimented that even the plan to come up with new ideas is planned in advance! Nothing is customized either, even the beds are the same size everywhere - and this doesn’t fit everyone perfectly! Due to this uniformity, emotions are rarely felt, originality is hard to come by, and no one really has the possibility to grow into their own person. No one can develop a soul, no changes ever really occur, and life is not truly lived! Instead, people fundamentally live in a rut – a secure one, granted - but a rut all the same, where no rules are broken and no boundaries come even close to being stretched. This world is frightening because a life lacking vitality is certainly a terrifying one! Nothing is unforeseen in the world under the control of The Machine and, again, without the spontaneity and excitement, “we have lost a part of ourselves.”
“I found a way of my own,” Kuno says in the story.
“A way of your own?” Vashti whispers in reply, “but that would be wrong.” “
Why?” Kuno inquires.
And this question shocks Vashti beyond measure. Even the concept of thinking for yourself is unheard of in this world. This obviously stems from the fact that even the artificial lighting is exactly the same all around the world! “The buttons, the knobs, the reading-desk…the temperature, the atmosphere, the illumination – all were exactly the same,” Forster writes of the rooms. In fact, what’s frightening here is that almost everything is artificial. Life has actually come to a point where direct exposure to sunlight will kill people. Humans interact so rarely in the world Forster creates, that even direct speech has become rude and unheard of. In that society it is primitive to have to talk to a person even “to announce [your] wants”! Nobody has their own will, or their own passions. Nobody ever does anything on the spur of the moment anymore. Nobody asks questions, and without questioning society is doomed right from the start, because there is no way for it to move forward or progress.
“There is no new way out,” Vashti says in the story.
“So it is always supposed” says Kuno.
“…The book says so,” says Vashti (The Book contains all the information needed about The Machine – much like The Bible).
“Well, the Book’s wrong”.
And that is a shocking thing to say in the world Forster creates. Kuno, a radical thinker who actually has some muscular strength, possess ideas like no one else does. He understands what life under the power of the Machine is really like. Forster writes Kuno as saying “We have lost the sense of space. We say “space is annihilated,” but we have annihilated not space, but the sense therefore.” This indicates that Kuno realizes that life under The Machine binds people, rather than giving more freedom instead.
People, due to the lifestyle of The Machine, can’t even maintain eye contact anymore, as it is too direct. Forster writes that “the desire to look direct at things” has all but diminished. Even though the world is believed as being advanced with The Machine, ironically, it is regressing at the same time. In fact, the life in the world Forster creates can be summed up in one sentence. Forster writes: “Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.”
This world is scary because it seems that in the present day, in the real world, society is only one step behind that in the story! And so the question presents itself: what would life be like if we let the technology we have now go one step further? The life is frightening, and there is a lesson to be learnt. We should not let ourselves become so dependent on machines, because “[machines] are much, but they are not everything.” After all, we still want change in our lives; we also still want some nature. But finally, and above all, we still want to feel – emotions and touch – or else, as in “The Machine Stops”, our world is doomed.