The story, set in a world where humanity lives underground and relies on a giant machine to provide its needs, predicted technologies similar to instant messaging and the Internet.
The story describes a world in which most of the human population has lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth.
Each individual now lives in isolation below ground in a standard room, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine.
Communication is made via a kind of instant messaging/video conferencing machine with which people conduct their only activity: the sharing of ideas and what passes for knowledge.
In the preface to his Collected Short Stories (1947), Forster wrote that "'The Machine Stops' is a reaction to one of the earlier heavens of H. G.
In contrast to Wells' political commentary, Forster points to the technology itself as the ultimate controlling force.
[2] As well as Forster predicting globalisation, the Internet, video conferencing and other aspects of 21st-century reality, Will Gompertz, writing on the BBC website on 30 May 2020, observed, "'The Machine Stops' is not simply prescient; it is a jaw-droppingly, gob-smackingly, breathtakingly accurate literary description of lockdown life in 2020.
"[3] In 2010, Wired magazine's Randy Alfred wrote, "1909: E.M. Forster publishes 'The Machine Stops,' a chilling tale of a futuristic information-oriented society that grinds to a bloody halt, literally.