Welcome to the Machine
Like the site says, “Anybody who uses the Internet should read E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops.” I came upon this story a few years ago somewhere. Forster wrote it in 1909 — all I want to know is, how the hell did he know? It’s like he had a direct conduit into my goddamn life:
Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere - buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.
All I need is the button that brings my food and bath to me instead of me having to get up and get it.