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The book referenced by Sacks - The Machine Sleeps - is positively, absolutely wonderful. It is, equally wonderfully, free for all, having been published in 1909: http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html To have so clearly seen the future (not ours, but the one ours portends) is truly, completely, and utterly remarkable. I cannot recommend it enough, and it is tantalising to me that Sacks devoted some of his last days to its exposition. To have had just a little more time... Here is my favorite passage: "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 in the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It was 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 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. Oh, I have no remedy - or, at least, only one - to tell men again and again that I have seen the hills of Wessex as Ælfrid saw them when he overthrew the Danes." |