The Machine Stops

The movie “The Movie Stops” showed a great point of view towards technological determinism. The movie was an extremist point of view: technology controls the lives of people and when the machine stops, civilization dies along with it. The movie effectively portrayed the technology as a living organism when it showed the dependence that the humans had on it. Technology is a driving force in our society today but I do not think it is possible for it to ever to get to the point that it did in “The Machine Stops”. In the movie, it became so extreme that the humans could not even visit the surface of the Earth without the help and permission of the machines. Machine controlled the humans to the point that it made me think that the humans were not even living a life worth living anymore. It seemed more so that the machines were living the lives for the humans instead. Parent-child relationships were diminished, as well as everyday face-to-face communication. This is not a life that is natural for the human species, therefore transforming them into a type of machine as well. The human beings controlled by machines became a form of robots that could not successfully think on their own. Their thoughts seemed to be robotic and their lives programmed for them. I really enjoyed the movie because it made me think about many of these things and the “quality” of life. What makes our present day lives different from a robot? The movie raised many thought-provoking questions that make it worth watching.