Yuletide Mechanical Omnibus Recollections

During the first lockdown, nearly two years ago now, I stumbled upon an article by the BBC’s then Arts Editor Will Gompertz which sung the praises of EM Forster’s 1909 short story ‘The Machine Stops’ and its immense prescience for our current predicament. Impressed by his review, I added it to my wish list and thought little else about it until this Christmas, when the least tech savvy of all my grandparents ordered it as a present for me. Suffice to say, I’d almost forgotten about it. 

The story concerns a woman - Vashti - living in a never ending network of tunnels and pods below the Earth’s surface, not only disconnected from her home, but disconcertingly uninterested in it. Instead, to the disgust of her son Kuno, she begins to worship ‘The Machine’, seeing it as not just an omnipotent tool of God, but God itself, responsible for all the innovation and ‘advances’ humanity has seemingly made whilst trapped underground. Her son, in turn, is restless with this imprisonment and vows to return to the Earth’s surface and reclaim his senses from the sensory overload of the machine’s technology. In the machine, communication is ‘virtual’, interaction is minimal, and people have little choice but to follow the instructions of higher, out-of-touch powers for strange, often inexplicable reasons. Comparisons to my first year of University are welcome.

The advantage of a short story is the ease in which you can sink yourself into another world and the speed at which the plot develops. Whilst Forster’s writing at times feels grandiose and pretentious, the story-writing is strong and the prescience is remarkable. But not just in its foresight of social distancing and virtual communication, but in it’s awareness of society’s burgeoning technological dependency.

I mention this because over the Christmas period, I was told by certain family members that I spend perhaps too much time on my phone (for what it’s worth, this article is being written on my mobile). My verbal response to this was to say that I don’t think the time spent on my phone is comparable to many of my contemporaries and that even so, it doesn’t feel excessive. The additional response I didn’t say out loud was that I had far fewer friends/flatmates to talk to and that many of the conversations I was surrounded by were not as relevant or engaging to me as they would be when I’m at University. That isn’t a criticism, but an observation, for at least to me my family are far from boring. I would even go as far as to say that many of them are at least reasonably interesting! 

Yet their comments reflect an age difference, I think, between the over 30s and the under 30s whose collective experiences with personal technology differ wildly. Technology has, for better or for worse, been ingrained in my entire life. Since I can remember, I’ve listened to an iPod nano to get to sleep at home. Whenever I got home from secondary school, I would slump into the sofa in front of the television armed with a tablet to pass the hours away until the evening. Reading was something largely preserved for summer holidays and before bed rather than a chosen regular hobby. It’s something I’ve tried to change in the last couple of years with mixed results.

Whenever I attempted to reduce my screen time, all I concluded was that whilst I could drop my phone time, my use of my laptop, school computers, and tablets compensated for it. Only the physical unavailability of technology, either in a Welsh field, Nepali valley or indeed anywhere with a roaming charge, can deprive me of it. Is the fight against technological innovation and personal invasion futile unless I want to become a hermit?

Yet the invasion doesn’t have to be bad. Christmas this year was scuppered by the same rotten lurgy that has scuppered almost everything else for the last two years, yet our family dinner was joined at the hip over Zoom. It was imperfect, and not without its challenges but it offered an interaction which would have otherwise been missed. We seemed in agreement that this virtual Christmas paled in comparison to being gathered stuffily together in a poorly ventilated living room, sinking collectively into a post-feast slumber. It demonstrated to me that we are users of technology, not Vashti-esque worshippers of it. Meanwhile, the New Year period for me was a sensory delight of hiking, mountain biking and partying like all the challenges we faced were a problem for next year. It was exactly what Kuno was missing, it was exactly what doesn’t require any technological interference. Amidst the fun, I even managed to read one and a half books, each significantly longer than ‘The Machine Stops’.

In fact, ‘The Machine Stops’ was so concise that Penguin added another short story at the end without even mentioning it on the front cover. ‘The Celestial Omnibus’ was at once both fantastical and historical, evaluating the role of intellectualism and class through the lens of a boy travelling through space in a horse-drawn carriage. His eyes of innocence and wonder contrast sharply with the eye of his academic neighbour who looks down upon the curiosity and mystery that seems to purvey in this fantasy universe. Less contemporarily relevant than ‘The Machine Stops’ I actually found it more engaging, less earnest and more forthright, the writing style reflecting the sweet naivety of the boy around whom we witness the journey of the omnibus.

As I travel north to Edinburgh for another semester, I am off to surround myself once again with academics and students. Whilst over 100 years of history have changed and partly democratised our society, Forster remains an articulate writer who can remind us to ground our conversations, and our work in the experiences we share. The lived experience of us pesky students and our teachers should not diminish the lived experience of those around us. To that end, maybe I was wrong to turn to my phone when conversations around me didn’t initially engage me. Maybe I just need to listen and remain aware that I’m not an egocentric child anymore and, even in my childhood home, I am actually an adult, albeit one who has food cooked and clothes washed for him whilst home.

Or maybe I am overanalysing, compelled to keep writing and working on my phone whilst it sits between my hands, to the point where I’m metaphorically spitballing each sentence in the vague hope that you might find it mildly interesting, or that you’re at least curious enough to see where it leads. That is what I will conclude from Forster’s work - the importance of curiosity, driving forward our interests and pursuit of purpose in this imperfect world, and that the technology which surrounds us can actually support rather than stifle the achievement of each of our goals, providing we can maintain our own aspirations. 

Justifying all that, I’ve managed to articulate and express my thoughts on last Christmas, New Year and a book to you, all from the discomfort of my own seat on the 10:15 train to Edinburgh. It really isn’t all that bad. As for the rest of my journey, I might even read a book…