First published in 1909, E.M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” has been hailed as the most prescient sci-fi story of the 20th century. His rebuttal to the utopian visions of H.G. Wells describes the spiritual dissatisfactions of a mother and son whose physical needs are placated by the global machine. When her faith in the Machine is tested by her son’s striving for an embodied life, and by the terror of silence when the Machine’s hum finally stops, does she reembrace her humanity, or will her only thought be for the “wish of the Machine?”

On Friday, November 20, at 12 PM, join Nate Ijams (Morningside) for a lunch seminar on the religious impulses of today’s technologists and the uses of dystopian fiction for reasoned discussion about AI.