Rage against the Machines

Alex Wellerstein:

As a humanist at a moment when the most profound disrespect to humanistic endeavor, art, thought, and ideals are being broadcast constantly from the engines of capital, the halls of governance, the administrators of higher education, and the centers of science and technology, I will admit that “The Machine Stops” sings to me and my concerns. Not so much in the sense that I think its specific future of people living underground is one that I am particularly worried about. But Plato’s cave was never a warning about literal caves, either — it is about the cave of men’s minds. We live at a moment in which great excavators are at work, boring metaphorical holes in to the metaphorical earth, and their monied and powerful operators are telling us pleasant lies about how happy we’ll all be, once we embrace living in our little cells.