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"Real science opens windows for us to look through. We're right at the footsteps of the most interesting scientists around."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Machine Apartment | ||
| Each person lives isolated in their own room, supported by a vast planetary machine. |
Fascinating picture presented of life in isolation.
| Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk--that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh--a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs... |
| Technovelgy from The Machine Stops,
by E.M. Forster. Published by Oxford and Cambridge Review in 1909 Additional resources -
|
Everything you need - information, food, even medical care - is provided to you. No one needs to leave their room.
The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned; neither Vashti nor her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in her armchair she spoke, while they in their armchairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well.
See the reference for the telemedicine apparatus from the same story. See also micro-bachelor apartment from Idoru by William Gibson, automated apartment maintenance from Ubik by Philip K. Dick and Quadraturin from Quadraturin, by Sigizmund Krzhizhanowsky.
Then she switched off her correspondents, for it was time to deliver her lecture on Australian music.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Machine Stops
More Ideas
and Technology by E.M. Forster
Tech news articles related to The Machine Stops
Tech news articles related to works by E.M. Forster
Machine Apartment-related
news articles:
- Hotel Room Of The Future Is German, Retrotastic
| AI-THu Shapeshifting Transformer Home |
| With Mycotecture, We'll Just Grow The Space Habitats We Need |
| Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast |
| LiquidView Ersatz Windows, ala Philip K. Dick |
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'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.'
'...it was all composed of tiny, identical cubes, carefully laid to form a tilelike surface.'
