Comments on: Ask Ray | E.M. Forster’s 1909 story The Machine Stops predicts the web, tablets and artificial intelligence

By: Gorden Russell

Gorden Russell — Fri, 10 Apr 2015 03:35:57 +0000

It’s going to happen just as Ray described for cell phones. The first ones were big and clunky and didn’t work very well and cost so much that only the wealthy could have them.

Now the poor are given cell phones by the government with 200 free minutes a month to help them look for work. (They call them “Obama Phones.”)

Some of my neighbors have them and tell me that they are very careful to save these minutes for work searches…but all they can find are part time minimum wage jobs.

So the wealthy will get the rejuvenation treatments first, then the rest of us.

But once they are common, it will be seen as cruel and unusual punishment to deny them to prison inmates.

So then those sentenced to natural life will be kept in prison for thousands of years.

This combines an actual Twilight Zone episode with a Steven King movie.

That guy Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could get the death sentence, or he could be in prison forever and ever and ever. Death would be a kindness.

By: timkal27

timkal27 — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 19:53:37 +0000

Hello Mr. Kurzweil. I have a question about the aging and indefinite lifespan. How far are we on different options and other techniques. Would it be only the wealthy and rich to be able to afford these things or would people who work and have health insurance also be able to gain access as well. It would save a lot of money on health insurance if everyone was able to gain access to it. I understand murderers and rapists and what not shouldn’t be allowed or a whole different jail system would have to be put in place as well. I am very interested in this topic. I am hopeful that in 20 years there is medication out there or something to reverse the aging effect. Also hoping that hospitals read and get studies to know what they have to do to keep people “in tune” if you will. Like taking a car in for an oil change. Then you get checked out and up and are giving the keys to go.

By: wecochaz

wecochaz — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 00:08:24 +0000

Hi Ray,

Can you explain people taht have Out of Body experiences??

By: diyspartanbiotech

diyspartanbiotech — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 13:07:14 +0000

Pneumatic tubes will be the future if intercountry delivery of mail I guess. No trucks – no CO2 emissions

By: mattjfox

mattjfox — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 13:03:40 +0000

Forget the audio books on this one… It is only 40 pages long… As for predicting the Internet… I can somewhat see the relation.. Definitely video conferencing. I didn’t see anything at all about tablets though unless I just missed that part. I agree with Gordon about the writing style though too. Punchy little one liners that are direct and to the point. Almost as though the book was written for some future generation with low attention spans. :). Anyhow was really a great read and I am ever curious about passage to India now.

By: Cybernettr

Cybernettr — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 18:14:45 +0000

Well, I watched the embedded 1966 film and I guess this did foreshadow the internet (not to mention videoconferencing), which was pretty remarkable for 1909 (although it did have something about sending messages via pneumatic tube). While it was pretty dystopian and anti-technology as a whole it was all in all a pretty good caution against putting too much reliance on machines.

By: sblack

sblack — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 19:29:07 +0000

Thank you! Repaired now.

By: Gorden Russell

Gorden Russell — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 21:54:52 +0000

I started listening to the audiobook last night and found it excellent. Years ago I watched the television mini-series of “A Passage to India” on PBS and still have a lot of strong flashbacks to the drama…but I was not tempted to check out his books because, after all, he was one of those old-time Upper-Class Brits from a posh public school.

But this changes everything. While the prose recitation still sounds as an Upper-Class Brit would sound, it has short, punchy sentences that keep the story moving.

I didn’t notice any of those long, convoluted, comma-spliced sentences of the type that Henry James brought back to this country after his long stay in England.

This is such a game-changer! This shows that contemporary Americans can read E.M. Forster without getting lost between the commas and falling asleep.

By: Singme

Singme — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 16:46:04 +0000

Thanks, will download the audiobook: https://archive.org/details/machine_stops_librivox

By: Gorden Russell

Gorden Russell — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 06:08:49 +0000

I read “The Sirens of Titan” back about 1978. Damn, DSM, I don’t remember his part. I’ll need to go back and read it again.

Now Vonnegut’s “Player Piano” is another work that I remember much better.

It’s because of that book of his that I keep telling people that the people must own the robots that are self-replicating.

By: tedhowardnz

tedhowardnz — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 22:24:15 +0000

Perhaps the machine isn’t anything physical but rather an analogy to our societal reliance on money and finance (the major engine of our society). That machine certainly seems to be breaking down – and most seem to still be trapped within its mythology and dogma.

By: SteveJordan

SteveJordan — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 12:14:56 +0000

I’ve always been fond of the Lawrence Manning story, “The Man Who Awoke,” written in the late 1930s; he predicted AGI trying to take over the world, life-replacing immersive VR, stem cell therapies as a “bridge three” technology, and travel in deep space. (Sadly, he only made the one foray into SF.)

“The Machine Stops” seems a bit more like a timely warning; we do need to get more people aware of the work being done by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, the Future of Humanity Institute, and others.

By: SteveJordan

SteveJordan — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 12:09:38 +0000

Under the “Part Two” video, the name “Vashti” is spelled “Vasthi”. I suspect the first spelling is correct.
Also, under “Related Viewing,” the second paragraph should have the word “Man’s”, not “Mans”.
This message should self-destruct after corrections are made.

By: melajara

melajara — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 08:31:21 +0000

I don’t have the time to listen to this promising opus now but I decided to keep it for reading later, so the good news for everybody is that you can find a printed version for free here: http://manybooks.net/titles/forstereother07machine_stops.html

Cheers

By: DSM

DSM — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 04:29:50 +0000

I came across an uncanny description of what we now call the web and cloud computing, from 1959 in “The Sirens of Titan” by Kurt Vonnegut.

“The message itself was unknown to Salo. It had been prepared by what Salo described to Rumfoord as, ‘A kind of university — only nobody goes to it. There aren’t any buildings, isn’t any faculty. Everybody’s in it and nobody’s in it.

“It’s like a cloud, that everybody has given a little puff of mist to, and then the cloud does all the heavy thinking for everybody. I don’t mean there’s really a cloud. I just mean it’s something like that.

“If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, Skip, there’s no sense in trying to explain it to you. All I can say is, there aren’t any meetings.’”