The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Beware the New Scholasticism

The Machine Stops, written in 1909, is certainly a remarkably prescient tale of technological development. Like a proto-Cryptonomicon, it introduces ideas that we can now identify with the internet, the iPad, and even the 3-D production of goods, including food, from information. But its lasting value isn't about technology; it's about the mistakes we make when we start to think in a particular way. The biggest mistake is that of what we have come to call fake news.

Fake news is nothing new. But it is not merely unsubstantiated rumour. Fake news is that which confirms our existing views about the world. It consists of facts which cannot be gainsaid because no other facts are sufficient to displace the views we have already committed to. And it exists historically most markedly in societies in which established power is threatened.

There is an historical epoch that was in fact dominated by fake news, the Middle Ages. This was the era of Scholasticism, a mode of thinking that prided itself in summarising the implications of what was already known about the world and making sure nothing else, particularly if it disturbed established views, could be known.

In this, Scholasticism served the establishment of the Christian Church. Revelation, according to church doctrine, had been completed at the death and resurrection of Christ. This was the ultimate knowledge available to humanity. Nothing more was necessary. Further factual information or experience was at best superfluous and at worst distracted from the import of doctrine, which might be extended by inference but never altered.

Forster's fictional world is one of technological Scholasticism. It is a world of "undenominational Mechanism." New experiences are considered not only unnecessary but positively harmful to this new religion. Vashti, the protagonist, " is seized with the terrors of direct experience." She and her fellow-travellers on long distance air ships refuse even to look out at the Himalayas since the sight "gives them no ideas." In good scholastic tradition, the only valid ideas are those that can be inferred from existing knowledge:

"First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by love and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element -direct observation."

Our modern information technology is the vehicle for just this tenth-hand news. And the effects are similar to those that affected Forster's dystopia as well as the latter Middle Ages. We have experienced the same growing tensions between the governed and their governors; the same rise in extremist views and violent clashes among those who have adopted them, and the same yearning in many parts for the good old days of permanent, unchanging truth about the world.

I suggest as a rule of thumb: any news that claims historical continuity, from any quarter whatsoever, is probably fake. Conservative politicians call it ‘family values’; the Catholic Church calls it ‘tradition’; Protestants call it the ‘fundamentals’; scientists call it ‘established theory’; Silicon Valley and Madison Avenue call it ‘improvement’; anyone over 60 calls it ‘yesterday’. All fake and all directed toward the maintenance of power. As Forster says, fake news is undenomenational.

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