Long Live The Machine!

My propaganda poster that I created is promoting a pro machine stance that makes a scape goat of the rebels for all of it ails. I incorporated fear as a mechanism to lead the masses into submission by making anyone who is against the machine is it’s enemy. In the first sentence I used irony by saying that it is the rebels that are trying to revert humanity to a primitive state when they clearly are already incompetent and useless in their cells. I used many of the same techniques that forester used in the story like irony, satire, personification and euphemism. The second part I purposely used the word homes instead of cells because I wanted it to seem the central committee is trying to persuade the population that they are living comfortably and aren’t there any restraints on them as if they are free to make their own decisions. Lastly for the bottom part I wanted a slogan that would further express this world’s obsession and religious outlook towards the machine like it’s a god or a king, this is personification I used. My colour pallet I used was red and yellow the colours of communism because I wanted to portray the central committee as a tyrannical central dictatorship that was hyper atheist but still worshiped their leader/machine like a god. I also used the colours because they do well for popping out at showcasing power and strength. I also made a machine logo to brand the poster so just in case you don’t get the obvious hints it is made by the central committee since the humans in this dystopian world are quite incompetent and need to be herded like sheep. The propaganda poster is made to polarize the masses, seclude the anti-machines thinkers from the rest and promote and protect their regime. 

Synthesis composition of The Machine Stops and Wall-E 

The Machines Stops is a gruelling vision of what our future could look like. E.M Forster science fiction dystopian story is terrifying how close we are now to the future he thought of over a century ago. Today we can see so many parallels and similarities to Forster dystopian world. We humans have developed at an increasing faster and faster rate technologically and socially since the industrial revolution and during the technological revolution we seem to be on a trajectory that looks more and more grimmer the more we tread on. So much of what we do is automated, and we don’t think much of it because why would we want to move our bodies if we don’t have to. Roombas can clean for us, Siri can search anything across the bottomless pit of information we call the internet, we are always distracted by our phones and screens and always want them to be better and more compact. We as a species in the more advanced world don’t talk to anyone outside are immediate friend group or family and even then you ask almost any middle class or higher teen now a days in our country and they will tell you that they prefer to talk to their friends digitately rather than face to face just like what is shown in The Machine Stops, but after all why would we want to leave the comfort of our homes when we can just face time anyone? We used to go out shopping just less than 20 years ago and now we do the majority of it online. If we continue allowing the machines, we build to take our jobs and do everything for us then eventually we will run out of anything to do. Stuck in a loop of desire for comfort and perfection in life we will end up just like the humans in The Machine Stops and Wall-E. This quote in the story highlights what humanity has become quite well “Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.” In Wall-E written by Andrew Stanton the planet has been abandoned, in humanities increasingly desire for consumption and production we trash our planet beyond recovery and so we had to take to the stars. However, even when we made our home uninhabitable for life to sustain, we don’t change; we don’t improve upon ourselves, and we go even further down the hole and become adult babies entirely incompetent of doing anything on our own even the most basic of tasks. The humans in Wall-E are similar to the ones in the machine stops in his manner, an example of this is when someone drops a book, they aren’t even competent enough to pick it up, so they just wait there so someone to fix the problem, but no one ever does. The captain of the Axion sums up humans exitance for the past 700 years by saying “I don’t want to survive I want to live!” Humans in both stories are piles of flesh that solely exist for surviving and no one really experiences anything in life that brings them true happiness. In conclusion the machine Stops echos what our future could be if we stay on our current path, we must do everything in our power to overcome the societal boundaries that wish to enslave ourselves with machines like what Kuno said “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? 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 of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops — but not on our lines. 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. “