An arm-chair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk – that is all the furniture. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape like the cell of a bee. Here follow excerpts from Forster’s ‘ The Machine Stops’. The story was written in 1908, published in late 1909 in a low-circulation magazine, and belatedly published in a collection, The Eternal Moment and Other Stories, in 1928. Given the authoritarian tendencies of governments everywhere, it is timely to resurrect a short story by E. Given the current confinement imperative, one is confronted everywhere with the idolization of detached digital communication, turning necessity into a virtue.
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