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digest 1996-08-13 #002



thousand people; in certain directions human intercourse had advanced
enormously." Although clumsy public gatherings no longer occur,
Vashti
lectures about her specialty, "Music During the Australian
Period,"
over the web, and her audience responds in the same way. Later she eats,
talks
to friends, and bathes, all within her room. She finally falls asleep
there, but
not before she kisses the new Bible, the Book of the Machine.

Kuno, in contrast, once made his way illegally to the surface, where he
saw
distant hills, grass and ferns, the sun and the night sky. The Machine
dragged
him back to its buried world, but he understands the difference between
pseudo-experience and reality. "I see something like you in this
plate,"
he tells his mother, "but I do not see you. I hear something like
you
through this telephone, but I do not hear you." Vashti also senses
the
lack. Gazing at her son's image in the plate, she thinks he looks sad
but is
unsure ". . . for the Machine did not transmit nuances of
expression. It
only gave a general idea . . . that was good enough for all practical
purposes.
. . ."



The drama in the story comes as the Machine inexplicably begins to
decay, at
first producing minor quirks. The symphonies Vashti plays through the
Machine
develop strange sounds that become worse each time she summons the
music. That
troubles her, but she comes to accept the noise as part of the
composition. A
friend's meditations are interrupted by a slight jarring sound, but the
friend
cannot decide whether that exists in her cell or in her head.  More
serious
problems ensue with food, air, and illumination, but Vashti—like
almost
everybody else—clings to the conviction that the Machine will
repair
itself. 



When the Machine's demise is nearly complete, Vashti's faith fails with
it
in a way that recalls Margaret Schlegel's speech about large numbers of
people.
For all the thousands Vashti "knows," she dies nearly alone in
a mob
of panicked strangers, frantically clawing upwards to the Earth's
surface as the
Machine finally stops. Her sole redemption comes from a moment of true
human
contact: She encounters Kuno to talk, touch, and kiss "not through
the
Machine" just before they perish with the rest of the masses.
Forster
leaves us amid that final failure of the race to "Only
connect,"
sustained solely by the promise that the few who survive on the surface
will
rebuild, without the Machine.



Long after Forster imagined this dire scene, the
technology of connectivity is here. The details differ slightly: Instead
of
sound and moving images, we exchange written messages and pictures over
the
Internet, which links computers globally through fiber-optic telephone
lines. (I
use "Internet" here as a generic term for the major computer
webs—the
Internet itself and its World Wide Web, and the commercial nets
connected to it,
such as America Online. These, by the way, can also carry real-time
sight and
sound, which will surely grow in use.) But the logic of network
connectivity,
whether one-to-one or one-to-many, remains unchanged, and so does the
loss of
personal dimensions. The images in Forster's world move and speak, but
do not
convey facial nuances. Except for the limited use of still images, our
electronic messages omit physical attributes. Forster's imaginary
system, and
our real one, offer unprecedented breadth of connection—there are
an
estimated 10 to 30 million Internet users worldwide—but do not
allow people
to touch, or to read each other directly.  



On the Internet, Forster's implied questions still beg for answers. Open
a
magazine or newspaper, and you're likely to find an article asking a
simple
question: Does the Internet break down isolation, or merely provide
pale
simulations of friendship and love that drive out the real things?  At
one
extreme, a recent newspaper story announces "On-Line addiction:
wire
junkies are multiplying as more people withdraw into their private
worlds,"
and describes Internet users who are "ensnared in a net of fiber
optic
lines . . . and loneliness." But some users tell a different story.
Mary
Furlong, the founder of a group called SeniorNet, says: "I see a
lot of
loneliness in the senior population and lack of mobility. . . . Going
on-line
allows you to be intellectually mobile and be socially
mobile"—exactly
what the optic plates of Forster's world offer its confined inhabitants.
There
are even indications that the lack of physical presence can be
advantageous. A
London-based group finds the Internet to be a "nonprejudicial
medium,"
especially valuable for children with conditions like cerebral palsy
that affect
speech.  



In Forster's story, the rise of the Machine came from a belief in
progress,
which had "come to mean the progress of the Machine." Today,
the
relentless march of constantly updated computers and infrastructure
sweeps us
along to use the new technology because it is there, even when it
conflicts with
existing ways of life. A case in point is occurring in Italy, where a
real
estate consortium has spent more than $2 million for an entire village,
Colletta
di Castelbianco, founded in the thirteenth or fourteenth century and
long since
abandoned. The developers will turn its medieval walls and arches into a
"telematic"
village, creating apartments outfitted with the latest communications
equipment
including high-speed access to the Internet. The idea is that
businessmen can
operate on a global scale while enjoying the beauties of the rugged
Ligurian
region. Even the village cafes will be linked to the Internet, with
facilities
for video conferencing.  



In a nation that values its cappuccino accompanied by enthusiastic
conversation, the project evokes mixed reviews. Paolo Ceccarelli, an
architect
who studies the impact of computers, believes the Italian way of life
is
unlikely to bring forth many devoted Internet afficionados. He is
depressed by
the disconnection he sees in the Internet village. Echoing Forster's
themes, he
contemplates businessmen "parking their BMWs . . . climbing the
stairs to
their hermetically-sealed apartments and plugging in their portables in
unison,
all blissfully unaware of each other's presence."



It's true that even in Forster's vision, traces of
emotion and relationship elude the grip of the Machine. "Human
passions
still blundered up and down," Forster wrote, and it is clear that
Vashti
and Kuno share a mother-son link, although Kuno has been raised in a
public
nursery. Sexual love, however, has changed radically. Sitting passive
and
isolated, people no longer touch each other, and their physical
attractiveness
has diminished. Vashti is described as a "swaddled lump of flesh .
. . five
feet high, with a face as white as a fungus." The Machine controls
procreation, sending citizens traveling for the specific purpose of
propagating
the race. In this world where people do not kiss, where sex happens on
assignment, Kuno rails that the Machine "has blurred every human
relation
and narrowed down love to a carnal act."  



Human passions still blunder around the Internet, too, where people
have
fallen in love and gone on to form complete relationships or marry. But
in an
outcome that Forster did not consider, the Internet also adds the more
or less
artificial experiences of cybersex to the sexual repertoire. Sex over
the 'net
means incomplete involvement in different degrees, from exchanges among
mutually
responsive participants to the solitary viewing of pornography. Remote
sex has
its undeniable impact, and in a world dealing with the disease of AIDS,
it may
stand in for unsafe actual sex. But can it stand in emotionally for
genuine
sexual love? Responding to this concern, participants at a recent
Vatican
conference on "Computers and Feelings" declared that cybersex
is "the
end of love. It is empty loneliness." That judgment is based on a
recognition that human experience is diminished as it is filtered
through
electronic channels.  



Forster went further. Fearing that more technology
meant less humanity, he utterly rejected the technical achievements of
his time.
In 1908, after hearing of the first successful airplane flight over a
kilometer-long circuit, he wrote in his journal, ". . . if I live
to be
old, I shall see the sky as pestilential as the roads. . . . Science . .
. is
enslaving [man] to machines. . . . Such a soul as mine will be crushed
out."
But we have come to learn that instead of producing a monolithically
"bad"
or "good" effect, a rich technology usually generates a
balance sheet
of benefits and costs—many of them unpredictable, because people
use
technology in unexpected ways. Thomas Mann once said, "A great
truth is a
truth whose opposite is also a great truth." A significant
technology also
embraces opposites; if some of its applications constrain human
potential,
others enhance it.  



The Internet, in fact, helps people find kindred spirits. Forster did
not
foresee this development, but his story hints at it, for Vashti could
either
talk to a friend through the Machine or address an audience. Now many
Internet
users coalesce into groups that share concerns and emotional affinities.
People
with unusual beliefs or lifestyles, with secrets they dare not tell
family and
friends, seek each other out in thousands of news groups, list servers,
and chat
rooms. These cater to a variety of interests, problems, and ways of
life,
including a range of strong political views; divorce, grief, and
loneliness; and
a spectrum of sexuality, from heterosexual to homosexual, lesbian, and
bisexual
orientations, with variations. Within these groups, the private and the
hidden
can be revealed and validated, anonymously if desired.  



Forster himself grappled with the partial secret of his homosexuality,
which
colored his life and his writing. His biographer, P. N. Furbank,
concludes that
Forster knew he was homosexual by the age of 21. But while a gay
lifestyle was
then acceptable in some quarters, Forster did not feel he could openly
declare
his sexuality, or act on it freely. The tension remained until he tried
to
release it in a way that would reaffirm him as a writer. After the
success of
Howards End in 1910, he feared his creativity had dried up. Yet in
1913,
the idea for a novel about homosexual love came to him in a moment of
revelation. That seemed to show a way out of his barren time, and he
wrote Maurice
enthusiastically and at great speed. When it was done in 1914, however,
Forster saw that it could not appear "until my death or
England's,"
and it remained unpublished until after he died.



It is only a speculation,  but a revealing one, to
imagine how Forster would have fared with access to a like-minded group
on a
net, where he could have expressed what he had to suppress in the real
world.
After all, as a student at Cambridge he had been elected to the
exclusive
intellectual society called the "Apostles," where, among other
topics,
homosexuality was discussed in a spirit of free and rational inquiry,
providing
a sense of liberation that Forster later came to value greatly. On-line
access
would have created the opportunity to circulate Maurice to a larger but
still select group that would accept its theme—a form of
publication that
would have brought even greater fulfillment.  



Yet time on-line would have been ill used for Forster the writer.
Aimless
chat is the insidious seduction of the Internet; it can replace inward
contemplation and real experience. In the decade after Maurice, Forster
looked both inward and outward. His internal life became more unified as
he came
to terms with his self-doubts, and his sexuality. His external life
developed as
he worked for the Red Cross in Alexandria during the war, returned to
England,
and left again for his second visit to India. He deepened old
relationships, and
formed new ones, in all three places. All this must have been necessary,
in ways
hardly discernible at the time, before Forster could break free of his
unproductive period to complete A Passage to India in 1924—a
ripening that came only through the slow refining of life-as-lived into
understanding.  



Forster probably would have sensed this—just as he understood
technology's potential to both isolate and overwhelm the individual. In
the
world of the Machine, each person could call or be called through his
blue
plate; but each could also touch an isolation switch to stop all
interchange.
While it is not always so simple, we can make individual choices about
how and
when to use technology. And in allowing his future humans their privacy
between
bouts of communication, Forster drew a fine metaphor for both aspects of
"Only
connect!": the joining of beast with monk carried out in the
mind's
solitude, the essential reaching out to others that breaks
isolation—and
the combination of the two, through the internal distillation of felt
experience.










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