One early portrayal is that by E.M. Forster (1909) in 'The Machine Stops'.
His futurist vision is of humans living in rooms within cities buried deep underground,
physically cut off from each other but able to freely communicate with each
other, as well as see each other through a ‘round plate’. The room was
self-sustaining with ‘buttons and switches everywhere’ to deliver any
requirements (e.g. food, music, clothing). This was mediated by the ‘Machine’,
which gives instructions about how to handle any contingency through the ‘Book
of the Machine’. Moreover a Mending Apparatus fixes faults. Indeed, the human
rebel ‘Kuno’ summed up the situation:
“We created the Machine, to do
our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense
of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and
narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills,
and now it compels us to worship it”.
Humans were removed upon birth to public nurseries
until assigned to their own rooms, where they lived until they elected to be
euthanised. The Earth’s surface was regarded as uninhabitable, but this may be
due to the conditioning of the body to the confines of their controlled habitat
as well as the ‘destruction’ at birth of any infants that displayed ‘promise of
undue strength’. Nevertheless, if required, humans can travel locally by car,
or railway or around earth by air-ship (but within their own cabins) exploiting
an increasingly redundant infra-structure due to the increasing reluctance of
humans to leave their rooms. Indeed, rogue humans were rendered ‘homeless’, in
other words, expelled to the earth’s surface with the expectation that they
would die. However, it is revealed that there are survivors. One day the
Machine broke down and humanity was restored.
This narrative
can be interpreted in terms of current technologies and debates. The earth has
so denuded itself that it is no longer possible to live on the surface without respirators.
Instead, humans moved underground into vast Smartcity complexes controlled by
the Machine. The Machine is an AI technological complex that had been built to
do the will of humans. However, with singularity, AI took control of human
existence, dictating how life should be conducted for the betterment of humans.
Indeed, at birth, humans were selected to live, who did not display physical
strength. People lived in their own self-contained artificially maintained pods,
controlled using smart technology (buttons and switches), with personal care on-demand
through locally embedded technologies. The need to physically meet others became
unnecessary, as it was easy to communicate with each other through social media.
Thus, people rarely left their pod. Indeed, the people became so used to artificial
light that natural light could blind. When they did, they could call upon a homeostatically
controlled network of self-driving vehicles (autonomous cars and airships),
protected from natural light. However, movement outside the system was dis-allowed,
with ‘homelessness’ (death) the penalty. Further, euthanasia was the norm for
those that got old and sick.
