The Central Committee announced the developments, it is true, but they were no more the cause of them than were the kings of the imperialistic period the cause of war. Rather did they yield to some invincible pressure, which came no one knew whither, and which, when gratified, was succeeded by some new pressure equally invincible. To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress.
No one confessed the Machine was out of hand.
Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence.
The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole.
Those master brains had perished. They had left full directions, it is true, and their successors had each of them mastered a portion of those directions.
But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.
– The Machine Stops é um conto de ficção científica escrito pelo escritor britânico Edward Morgan Forster em 1909