{"id":7075,"date":"2019-02-24T16:03:29","date_gmt":"2019-02-25T00:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=7075"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:39:40","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:39:40","slug":"oliver-sacks-on-forster-and-rees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2019\/02\/24\/oliver-sacks-on-forster-and-rees\/","title":{"rendered":"Oliver Sacks on Forster and Rees"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a short essay by the late Oliver Sacks in current issue of The New Yorker<\/i>: The Machine Stops<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He muses about people walking down the street staring at their phones.<\/p>\n

\nMuch of this, remarkably, was envisaged by E.\u00a0M. Forster in his 1909 story \u201cThe Machine Stops,\u201d in which he imagined a future where people live underground in isolated cells, never seeing one another and communicating only by audio and visual devices. In this world, original thought and direct observation are discouraged\u2014\u201cBeware of first-hand ideas!\u201d people are told. Humanity has been overtaken by \u201cthe Machine,\u201d which provides all comforts and meets all needs\u2014except the need for human contact. One young man, Kuno, pleads with his mother via a Skype-like technology, \u201cI want to see you not through the Machine…. I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then contemplates whether the Earth will go on or face catastrophe, citing Marin Rees.<\/p>\n

\nNonetheless, I dare to hope that, despite everything, human life and its richness of cultures will survive, even on a ravaged earth. While some see art as a bulwark of our collective memory, I see science, with its depth of thought, its palpable achievements and potentials, as equally important; and science, good science, is flourishing as never before, though it moves cautiously and slowly, its insights checked by continual self-testing and experimentation. I revere good writing and art and music, but it seems to me that only science, aided by human decency, common sense, farsightedness, and concern for the unfortunate and the poor, offers the world any hope in its present morass. This idea is explicit in Pope Francis\u2019s encyclical and may be practiced not only with vast, centralized technologies but by workers, artisans, and farmers in the villages of the world. Between us, we can surely pull the world through its present crises and lead the way to a happier time ahead. As I face my own impending departure from the world, I have to believe in this\u2014that mankind and our planet will survive, that life will continue, and that this will not be our final hour.\u00a0\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a short essay by the late Oliver Sacks in current issue of The New Yorker: The Machine Stops. He muses about people walking down the street staring at their phones. Much of this, remarkably, was envisaged by E.\u00a0M. Forster … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,50,2,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-human-progress","category-science","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7076,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7075\/revisions\/7076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}