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"I think we're still on that topic, still trying to figure out what computers are, how they change us, why we use them."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Breed Humans For Machines | ||
| Carefully cull the strong, resilient humans in favor of weakness, that the human race might be more adapted to life in the Machine. |
This is an early literary formulation of an idea that was common in the Industrial Revolution.
Kuno was the exception to the rule; a human being who was dissatisfied with life in the Machine.
| For Kuno was possessed of a certain physical strength.
By these days it was a demerit to be muscular. Each infant was examined at birth, and all who promised undue strength were destroyed. Humanitarians may protest, but it would have been no true kindness to let an athlete live; he would never have been happy in that state of life to which the Machine had called him; he would have yearned for trees to climb, rivers to bathe in, meadows and hills against which he might measure his body. Man must be adapted to his surroundings, must he not? In the dawn of the world our weakly must be exposed on Mount Taygetus, in its twilight our strong will suffer euthanasia, that the Machine may progress, that the Machine may progress, that the Machine may progress eternally. |
| From The Machine Stops,
by E.M. Forster. Published by Oxford and Cambridge Review in 1909 Additional resources -
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