Here is my poster using CANVA:

Resisting the Machine.

Propaganda has been used since civilization started. How would the propaganda look in The Machine Stops? In this propaganda poster, the design is simple, the coloring of the text and the background is intentional, green and blue for the colors most associated with nature. This was a decision I made because we know that humans in The Machine Stops have lost what it means to be with nature. So, the homeless in The Machine Stops would see the beauty of nature and use these two colors to symbolize it to mean resistance towards the Machine. Two touching fists in resistance to technology this is first due to two distinctly different hands touching which is something that in The Machine Stops is seen as taboo. It is also a fist as this is in defiance towards technology as technology is all around them so a hand without it would be revolutionary. The message “It’s time to live again.” Is in reference to the multiple quotes in The Machine Stops such as “Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine?” (pg 18) This should inspire an awakening in these people like Vashti who at the end of the story realized that she never walked out of the cave. The hypothetical people who would read this message would see that there is more to life than their technology. The simple design was also done by choice, this is because people are scared of new ideas that do not come from the machine. So, the simple design is trying to lessen the severity of this new idea. So, this is what I think, a revolutionist poster would look like in The Machine Stops.

Synthesis composition of The Machine Stops and WALL-E:

How WALL-E and The Machine Stops shows clear predictions of our bleak future. However, we show hope unlike our successors in both fictions. WALL-E shows our not-so-distant successors, who are addicted to their technology in such a way where they do not know of a life outside their virtual worlds. This reminds you of people currently who do nothing but sit on their phones, if this is us now, what will we look like in a few hundred years? Well, this is exactly what The Machine Stops tries to tell us. A population of controlled humans, who only exist, to die “Cannot you see, cannot all the lectures see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the machine?” (pg 18) WALL-E makes the same prediction, “I don’t want to survive. I want to live.” (WALL-E Captain B. McCrea), already we see people wasting away their existence, without living, instead choosing to tap a screen hundreds of times a day. While we aren’t all there yet, we are getting dramatically closer each passing year. The damaging of the environment, with global warming growing, and with pollution worsening. We seem to be headed straight for this WALL-E predicted world. The arid wasteland of earth on WALL-E and in The Machine Stops is something we are already seeing here on earth, already three times the size of France is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Global climate up by 1.2 degrees Celsius globally since the 1950’s this is all due to advancements in technology, we have stopped caring for the earth. Instead, choosing to destroy it for the advancement of our toys. Very soon, will we need to hide underground from the pollution. Very soon, we will need to start up the WALL-E robots to clean up after our abandonment of nature. One of the reasons everyone is so dead in these fictional worlds, is because of the single big corporation which controls everything like Buy in Large from WALL-E. A massive company which takes absolute control, a company with all the money, and all the power. Something we see today, with just 6 large corporations controlling 90% of all mainstream media. However, we have hope, in The Machine Stops humans never tried to fix the pollution up above. But, in WALL-E they did, which is exactly what we need to strive for, and while current global efforts are not helping at the end of the day every single person matters. We have to be able to use our technology responsibly and have it help us instead of using it as a distraction. Just like at the end of WALL-E we must defy what the corporations want, and save our planet, and in the processes ourselves. A future of laziness, of corporate overlords, of dead nature, and most importantly of the take over of technology. Is something The Machine Stops, and WALL-E predict our future to be. Will we follow the dreaded path and have to learn from our mistake like the people in The Machine Stops? Or have we already learnt our lesson “Never, said Kuno, never. Humanity has learnt its lesson.” (pg 21)