E. M. Forster’s The Machine Stops (excerpts)

Excerpts of E. M. Forster’s 1909 futuristic dystopia The Machine Stops

By Mo Lotman | January 8, 2020 | Automation, Culture, Environment, Philosophy, Relationships, Society | Atrophy, Communication, Computers, Decadence, Dependence, Dystopia, E. M. Forster, Fiction, Internet, Nature, Progress, Social Commentary, Synthetic Food, travel

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The Prescience of E. M. Forster

Compared to 1984 or Brave New World, E. M. Forster’s 1909 futuristic novella The Machine Stops was, in some ways, the most eerily accurate prediction of our current technological milieu.

By Geoffrey Dutton | January 2, 2020 | Automation, Culture, Environment, Philosophy, Relationships, Society | Addiction, Atrophy, Class, Computers, Decadence, Dependence, Dystopia, E. M. Forster, Eugenics, Fiction, Internet, Nature, Pollution, Progress, Social Commentary, Synthetic Food

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Podcast #24: Michael Zimmerman Gets Philosophical on Tech

In a wide-ranging conversation, philosopher Michael Zimmerman contextualizes our technological journey within the history of Western thought.

By Mo Lotman | January 9, 2019 | Artificial Intelligence, Culture, Employment, Environment, Ethics, Knowledge, Philosophy, Podcasts, Religion, Society | Acts of Enclosure, Addiction, Agriculture, Ancient World, Anger, Aristotle, Arnold Toynbee, Artificial General Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, Authenticity, Axial Age, Behavior, Bible, Bolsheviks, Boundaries, Buddhism, Capitlism, Carolyn Merchant, Christianity, Civilization, Control, Craving, Creativity, CRISPR, David Loy, Death, Decadence, Deep Ecology, Delusion, Desire, Distraction, Earth, Ease, Embodiment, Engineering, Environment, Eternity, Exploitation, Exponential Growth, Facebook, Fake News, Fate, Finitude, Fire, Francis Bacon, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gnosticism, Golden Rule, Google, Greed, Hatred, Hegel, Heiddeger, Hubris, Human Nature, Humanness, Immaturity, Immortality, Industrial Revolution, Infantilization, Isaiah, Islam, Jaron Lanier, Karl Jaspers, Karl Marx, Knowledge, Lab-Grown Meat, Life, Loss, Martin Rees, Marxism, Master-Slave Dialectic, Meaning, Meat-Eating, Mediation, Medieval World, Metallurgy, Mind, Mining, Modernity, Money Economy, Morality, Mortality, Native Americans, Nature, Nazis, News, Nihilism, Obesity, Pain, Pascal, Peter Thiel, Philosophy, Plato, Playing God, Power, Production, Progress, Propoganda, Protestant Reformation, Ray Kurzweil, Reincarnation, relationships, Religion, René Descartes, Resentment, Resources, Respect, Sailing, Security, Self-Mastery, Silicon Valley, Smartphones, Socialism, Soviets, Spirituality, Splintering, Steve Jobs, Suffering, The Overman, The Singularity, Trade, Traditional Societies, Transhumanism, Twitter, Utopia, Wealth, Wildfires, Will to Power, Wisdom, Wonder

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On “Going Back”

“We can’t go back” is a favorite rejoinder to technoskeptics. We just don’t think it’s a compelling argument for much of anything.

By Mo Lotman | May 10, 2017 | Automation, Economics, Philosophy, Privacy, Society, Well-Being | Brexit, El Sisi, Income Inequality, Kevin Kelly, Lionel Shriver, Monopoly, Permaculture, Progress, Slavery, Smoking, Stasi, Stephen Hawking, Techno-utopians, Technological Determinism, Wisdom, WWII

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From the Sublime to the Ridiculous, part two

European communist states were, perhaps, the ultimate manifestation of the modern conflation of technological development with progress. But with such [...]

By David A. J. Reynolds | November 9, 2016 | Culture, Economics, Philosophy, Religion, Society | Christianity, Communism, Distraction, Empire, Happiness, Heidegger, Industry, Knowledge, Materialism, Michael Sacasas, Narcissism, Progress, Russia, Science, Secularism, Soviet Union, Space Race, Stalin, Steel, Sublime, Technological Determinism, The Frailest Thing, Transcendence

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From the Sublime to the Ridiculous, part one

It is exactly two hundred years ago that Byron, Percy Shelley, and his wife, Mary Shelley, were sequestered by a [...]

By David A. J. Reynolds | November 2, 2016 | Culture, Economics, Philosophy, Religion, Society | Christianity, Communism, Empire, Frankenstein, Genesis, God, Industry, Invention, Literature, Omnipotence, Poetry, Progress, Science, Secularism, Sublime, Transcendence, Walt Whitman

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