Recommendation | God of the Format

The Machine Stops is a bastard of a story. It is a sneaky little fucker, that got stuck somewhere in the cogs of history. It just took it a century to make its mark. It was born in 1909, among two other books by E.M. Forrester, in an unexpected, fleeting moment. Since then it returns and calls out to the future, imploring us to take responsibility. Now that our systems are also screeching, up to the point of silencing engines, the bastard has grown up and come to annoy us. But it seems that the eyes are already rolling by themselves. Weariness feels like a natural state. And that is exactly what makes The Machine Stops feel so close to heart, more than ever. Like the characters in it, we too have fallen into a dystopia of impatience.

The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster

She has no time, she has not even changed out of her pajamas, and her schedule is jam-packed with conference calls. This is the main mindset of Vashti, the protagonist of the story. Even when her son calls her from afar to tell her about a vision of the end of days. Even when he comes to warn her of the bitter end of their world, her impatience overcomes the maternal instinct to listen and accommodate.

Vashti and her son live inside a vast, world-encompassing machine that is replacing the Earth’s ecosystem. At some point in the future, for some reason, perhaps even by choice, humanity moved to live in a sort of underground beehive of cities, uniform in every cultural aspect—both in content and form (I will return to this distinction later). Whereas somewhere above, the surface of the Earth has become uninhabitable for humanity. The air is not breathable. Everything beyond is inaccessible, and everything accessible is identical. All that is left to do to pass the time is to sit in the private beehive booth and prepare for the next online lecture, scheduled for 7:00 p.m. This is cultural life in Forster’s invented future: meetings coordinated through a fog screen, transmitted live directly from the living room.

Today, it is hard not to see in Forster’s novella a prophetic story about our times. Perhaps it is precisely because the book was written before the advent of radio, when the last word in telecommunications was spoken on the telephone. Forrester, almost by accident, crossed the 20th century diagonally. He describes a world in which entertainment is consumed through platforms for entering the user’s personal content. A world in which long-distance conversation has been expanded from sound to image and transmission between individuals to a live multi-participant conversation. This indeed seems like an extension of the telephone medium and not of cinema or television. In 2020, in particular, it certainly echoes the complete transition that the world has made to meetings that are conducted by Zoom conference calls and the like.

But prophecies tend to move closer and further away from the object of the prediction we have given them in retrospect, according to passing trends and changing conjectures. And in fact, it is not at all certain that Forster tried to predict the future as he satirized the Europe of his time (1). That is why I am much more interested in understanding the spirit of the things he distilled. Forster’s scenario may very well look less accurate tomorrow; the next environmental crisis may not require isolation. Maybe we will get stuck with a different kind of emergency procedure. What is certain is that the weariness of everything and whoever is stuck in our face through the smart screen is going to stay with us for a long time.

In one way or another, Forster succeeded in predicting the neurosis and impatience caused by FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). His characters are magnetized to a medium that cultivates in them an unbearable discomfort from any action or distraction. They live in constant anxiety that they missed something because they were not next to the device. They do not notice the stress factor because the machine surrounds them from all sides. It contains them, it dictates the order that gives meaning to their lives. It is the only nature they know. In other words, the power of the machine is not in its technological efficiency—which slowly fails—but in the mandate given to it to dictate the format for all of humanity.

Allegedly, the format created by the machine is there to make it easier and more accessible. It provides stable living spaces, regular hours, and methods of online interaction, routine, etc. But at the same time, it turns out that the format becomes more important than the life it claims to sustain. Even humanity’s fanatical devotion to the machine is not seen as a religion with substance, but as an empty technocratic protocol. Vashti calms herself by reciting verses from the instruction book. There is no religion, there is only a format of religion; there is no human relationship, there is only a format for having human interactions. In fact, it turns out, there is no longer really a machine; there is only a format that humanity continues to maintain in an ever-decreasing manner until everything gets stuck. Because after all, without a physical infrastructure, there is no conceptual structural format. In other words, a format also needs a format to exist.

Sociologist Susan Leigh Star has written extensively about the dangers inherent in what can be called “over-formatting”. She examined extreme phenomena of classification, sorting and construction that led to opposite results from  the ones intended. This could be a health system that insists on classifying a disease partially and even incorrectly or a company that is not able to be flexible in the slightest to provide basic service to its customers. Star provides many examples of different situations of reversal of roles, in which something seems to be canceled out because it does not conform to an existing category or format (2).

It is not that the formatting should be condemned. After all, this is an essential tool like no other for the functioning of any company. Every relationship, whether official or intimate, is directed by scripts and formats: gender patterns, class conventions, time and space frameworks, behavioral conducts , discussion, etc. Already in the middle of the previous century, the sociologist Erving Goffman formulated the way in which humans are “framing” everyday life in order to conduct themselves within it. Sometimes the only way to succeed in something is to execute it, and the only way to execute it is while trusting the execution format; the standard, the protocol. In a healthy state, the format lives and breathes. It is “responsive”. It changes every time something is performed and adapts itself to it. In this sense, the format and the content are one and the same. They are fluid, rewriting each other, activating each other and updating in real time.

The problem arises in the zealous adoption of considering socialization and life in general as an overly fixed format/content relationship. There emerges a gap between what is defined as natural and what is defined as an artificial mechanism that is allegedly built, scaffold to scaffold, around a casting mold that enables and “contains” that same naturalness. An extreme case of a machine that refuses to update and leads its subjects to perdition is described in The Machine Stops. Whereas our machines do seem to be updating. At least we have that! But the real problem in both cases is that the updates that do take place are done invisibly. And so it turns out many times, that more than the machine is being updated according to our requirements, we are the ones who adapt ourselves to its format constraints. And this is exactly where everything starts to become unbearably deceptive and annoying. Here Forster cuts through the flesh of time and hits the main artery of the online world, as of 2020. This is where I start to think about the tight schedule inside the square format of my room, during quarantine, within the seemingly tight format of Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp, and Telegram apps.

The format here is to connect, the format is a friend. This is how it is explained to me over and over again in every Facebook ad. It’s me who is not sociable. And it is a shame, they are trying so hard for me to enjoy myself. Well, why is it like that?

Maybe it is because suddenly, every online heart-to-heart talk feels like another work session on the spectrum? Maybe because in every work meeting I am on guard so that they do not see into my soul? My face is all over the screen, my eyes will show that I am not focused, that I am hungry, that I slept badly, that I am basically a piece of shit. How likable am I really expected to be if the Zoom meeting started before I could brush my teeth? True, it was scheduled a long time ago, but who has a sense of time when everything is compressed to the same screen, in the same room, and formatted through the same software? And the green light is flashing. Scolding. Wanting me to reply yesterday to the 78 messages that appeared in the group chat right now.

So what is the wonder that I feel like a neurotic soldier in a lost war? After all, I am a virtual cannon fodder that pours itself from a bucket into a ready-made mold that is spilled from every crevice. I have long been no longer a creator but a producer of intellectual content, of empathetic experiences. I am a generic collaborative content myself. I am a confused face radiating from the room, and the most intimate space also seems like a stock photo in a database of bedroom backgrounds and bookcases.

The format does everything in its image. It flows through everything until everything begins to flow through it. It is present in everything until the mind already takes it for granted, thus making it invisible. The format plays hide and seek with me and does so  annoyingly. It changes buttons for me all of a sudden, and becomes filled with glitches and bugs. The connection starts flickering for me precisely when I need it the most, the second Skype rings. So, who am I going to take my nerves out on? My bastard child on the other end. Damn it! What are you doing, dropping these apocalyptic scenarios on me? Can’t you see I’m on another call?!

For reading and purchase

Link to read the story in English.

The Machine Stops was published in Hebrew in 2017 by Nahar Publishing, translated from English with an afterword and notes added by: Miri Eliav-Feldon. Details and purchase on the publisher’s website.

The Machine Stops, published by Nahar Books, 2017, translated from English by: Prof. Miri Eliav-Feldon