Here is my propaganda poster that was created with Picsart and Canva.

The machine is Man’s Best Friend

In the world of “The Machine Stops,” humans worship the Machine; this poster is working to strengthen the relationship between humans and The Machine. The saying “The Machine is man’s best friend” is a play on the phrase “A dog is a man’s best friend.” I choose this phrase because The Machine in this poster tells the people it will be by their side forever with anything they may need. In this case “Best friend” is an orange colour, this was used because it is the same colour as the hand in this photo. The bottom text “The Machine” is a lighter purple, which matches The Machine’s hand in the photo. The use of purple was because purple can be connected with something calming, The Machine would want people to be calm so that they would be more trusting of its ideas and what it wants to do. The image of the hands was chosen because it portrays the bond between two people, normally people shake hands in a greeting or agreement of some kind, in a way the machine has an agreement with all of the people that if they fuel the machine with their trust, in return they will receive whatever they desire. Finally, I used a lighter colour scheme because this poster’s goal is to gain trust, lighter colours are calmer and easier to look at. This works in this poster because it lulls the reader into a sense of security so they will be in a better position to trust The Machine. This poster’s goal is not to scare people into trusting the machine, it is more to reinforce the trust that already exists between humans and The Machine. This trust is vital if The Machine wishes to continue its leadership.

Synthesis Composition of The Machine Stops and WALL-E

Despite being published in 1909, The Machine Stops by E.M Foster, is a scarily accurate portrayal of a futuristic world in which humans are controlled by a machine. This short novel shares many similarities with our real-world despite its age and is a cautionary tale of what our future could become if we do not stop and reflect on the actions of companies and people.

In The Machine Stops, humans live surrounded by technology, relying on it to do everything. As we progress in our world more things are becoming technologized, we will reach a point where everything around us is electronic in some way. The Machine Stops explores a future in which humans have become unable to live on earth. It shows what happens to a society if one entity controlled everyone and everything. It portrays a future in which having individual thoughts or rebelling against the status quo could result in death. This is insightful to the readers of the book because it shows what could happen if we as a society continue to blindly put our trust in people and technology.

Just like in the book, the technology surrounding humans is disguised as something helpful, but underneath always has a negative side. For example, cell phones changed how people live and have mostly positive features that help our daily lives, however, cell phones have their negative aspects and should be used with precaution. Just like in The Machine, humans choose to live in blissful ignorance instead of acknowledging what’s around them.

The Machine Stops touches on how in this world, although we may start something with good intentions, it can grow larger than anything we could have expected and when it no longer needs its creators it can discard us without much thinking. “We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and the sense of touch … and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops – but not on our lies. The Machine proceeds – but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die.” (P. 17)

In both Wall-E and The Machine Stops it seems that The Machine and the spaceship from Wall-E were made with good intentions, but as time went on the people who made them realized the control they could have. In Wall-E, the BNL President says that “Operation Cleanup has, well, uh, failed. Wouldn’t you know, that rising toxicity levels have made life unsustainable on Earth.… Darn it all, we’re going to have to cancel Operation recolonize. So just stay the course. Rather than try and fix this problem it’ll just be easier for everyone to remain in space.” With the context of the movie, we know that Operation clean-up has not failed. The ship lied to the people to keep them on their ship. With all of humanity supposedly in these ships, you would have ultimate control by keeping them in the ships.

Wall-E and The Machine Stops are both important pieces of media to watch because they show us what could happen to our world if we are not careful. If we become self-aware, we can reflect on our understanding of these topics and prevent a dystopian future such as the ones we read in books.

Work Cited:

Shmoop Editorial Team. (2008, November 11). Wall-E quotes. Shmoop. Retrieved June 24, 2022, from https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/movie/wall-e/quotes