Seegert, Alf

'''Seegert, Alf. "Technology and the Fleshly Interface in Forster's 'The Machine Stops':''' An Ecocritical Appraisal of a One-Hundred Year Old Future." The Journal of Ecocriticism: A New Journal of Nature, Society[,] and Literature 2.1 (Jan. 2010).

From the on-line abstract: "As a […] critique of telepresence technologies like the Internet, 'The Machine Stops' satirizes hypermediated contact and […] valorizes contact made with the fleshly body […]. This move carries strong ecocritical implications in its suggestion that all authentic connection […] must be corporeal. The narrator’s apology on behalf of “beautiful naked man” (122) and his nostalgia for the robust, technology-free body are, however, both problematic. […] If the body proves to be but one kind of mediating interface itself, then on what grounds should the mode of fleshly connection be privileged over interactions mediated by motors, buttons, and video screens? If all contact must be mediated [… should we] consider one type of interface as 'more authentic' than another? [… The essay uses] an ecocritical perspective to explore such questions […], focusing […] on Forster’s depiction of technology as devastating to both the human body and to the experience of space and place. The timeliness of such concerns suggests that “The Machine Stops” might prove even more significant in the hypermediated world of today than it was a hundred years ago for questioning the relationship between corporeality, representation, and nature." 

4. LitCrit, RDE, 00/IV/12