1 The Machine Stops

1.1 Introduction

“Imagine if you can:” is our invitation from E.M Forster to picture a future where humans are connected with each other through technology; but without physical encounters; and far from struggling with the natural environment. In this fictional world people live in individual rooms in which all needs are satisfied through the clicking of electronic buttons. Bodily functions are reduced to the essential lower requirements necessary to sustain life. In brief, human life is managed by “the machine” which makes everything easy, comfortable, and risk-free. This is the starting point of a nightmarish literary journey which questions choices and emerging ideas about human development. The world imagined by this novel may be a powerful springboard for exploring important dilemmas that we face today.

The Machine Stops (Forster 1947), first published in 1909, is remarkable for the author’s prescience about the possibilities and dangers facing humanity in the future. The story seems very close to us in its themes and it is not difficult to understand Forster’s warning about a world dominated by hyper-mediated, meretricious contacts. A sentence such as: ‘She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously’ is an example. It is suggestive of today’s Facebook and Twitter trends with their superficial attraction as contemporary forms of human contact. The anonymity and disembodied nature of such exchanges also mean that they are open to verbal abuse. There are also phrases such as: “….be quick… I am wasting my time” and claims about being “always busy” that are current nowadays and allow our ready identification with the narrative. The story follows the attempts to communicate between a son and mother, which describes their condition in a human civilization that lives isolated, under the groundFootnote 1, and without physical contact. The alternative that Forster implies is one that recognizes humanity’s need for actual bodily experiences: “I want to see you not through the machine…” This is the appeal from Kuno to his mother Vashti at the beginning of the story. It has been observed that literature, and indeed art in general, shows that when humanity encounters the possibilities and implications of its own science, it usually faces the imponderables of passions and instincts associated commonly with embodiment (Novaes 2003). Here we explore Forster’s story as a pioneering example of dystopian or, as some prefer, anti-utopian literature which illustrates this.

It has been argued that the story represents: “….the first full-scale emergence of the twentieth-century anti-utopia {which} begins the series of ‘admonitory satires’ that includes Zamyatin’s We, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.” (Hillegas 1967: 82). Forster, later to be recognized as one of the greatest modern English writers, was then a young Edwardian intellectual concerned with human moral behaviour, tempered by secularist beliefs (Trilling 1964). According to Seegert (2010: 34) “….the story is also distinctively modernist in its quirky attunement to the alienation of a technologically mediated subject so completely divorced from nature that it doesn’t even realize that it is alienated anymore.” This enables us to consider how, through science and technology, we engage with the natural and animal world and with our fellow humans, how we understand and use our personal embodiment, the significance of Otherness and the possibilities of dialogue. The article focuses on how machines and automata are imagined and become part of lived human existence, using the perspectives of Buber’s philosophy of dialogue and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. We suggest that the fear of technology shown in dystopian literature indicates also a fear about the roles that humans already play in relational encounters. Literature, in this case, explores different ways of dealing with this fear and the questions it raises. In Foster’s story Kuno reminds his mother that the Machine was not made by a god: “Men made it. Great men, but men.” It stresses our historical condition and the power we have to change our reality. We argue that the understanding of dialogical conditions could help turn the relationship with technology into something more humane.

1.2 Dystopian literature, technology and cyber culture

Fiction is another reality which makes it possible to explore different universes through the genre of science fiction (Parrinder 2000). It moves between the reality of daily life and the realm of “what might be.” One of its functions is to explore human dilemmas and a free literature, as a form of art, is not committed to science with its aspiration to exact knowledge or truth. Instead, through imagination, it explores human reality, its possibilities and consequences.

“Fiction then, from Rabelais and Cervantes to Grass and Goytisolo and Gordimer, is another way of questioning truth as we strive for it through the paradox of a lie. That lie can be called the imagination. It can also be seen as a parallel reality. It can be observed as a critical mirror of what passes for the truth in the world of convention” (Fuentes 2005: 5).

When we consider Forster’s story, our main question is not how literature anticipates reality, but what we feel about this possible world. The concept of utopia, such as in Plato’s Republic (1994), written around 380 BC, More’s Utopia (1967) first published in Latin in 1516, and Andreae’s Christianopoli (2007), first published in Latin in 1618, has persisted in the human imagination through the dystopian or anti-utopian literature we have noted. However: “Such literature remained, nonetheless, indicative of humanity’s profound concern with its ethical condition, and with the fundamental struggle between evil and good in the societies it tries to build and to sustain” (Morgan and Guilherme 2014: 30). Utopian and dystopian literatures both raise questions about humanity’s place in a world which does so much to construct itself. The modern cinema also provides some outstanding examples of the utopian and dystopian debate, such as Lang’s Metropolis (1926), Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) Wilcox’s Forbidden Planet (1956), itself based on Shakespeare’s seventeenth century nightmarish fantasy The Tempest (2000), Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), and Stanton’s Wall-E (2008). The fascination with and fear about technology are seen also in the “Humans” Sci-fi television series (Reuters 2015). As does literature, such films and drama before it explore changes in society brought about by technology; and the possibilities of remaining human when challenged by the necessity of extreme interaction with intelligent machines (Tucherman 2006). Such communication mediated by machines, fear of human contact, of emotional engagement, bodily weakness, frontiers of time and space blurred by virtual interaction are elements present in Forster’s novel that also figure in our current scientific debates.

In the introduction to the 1947 edition of his collected stories Forster wrote that The Machine Stops was: ‘….a counterblast to one of the heavens of H. G. Wells.” (Forster 1947: vii; cited in; Hillegas 1967: 86). As Hillegas argues: “Certainly it is in spirit and detail an inversion of the future seen by Wells in A Modern Utopia. The controlling principle for this inversion is Forster’s humanism.” (Hillegas 1967: 87). Forster explores the possibilities and consequences of living in a world in which humanity’s dependence on technology threatens the essence of what it means to be human.

As we have noted, Forster proves remarkably prescient about what has been made reality during the 20th and early twenty-first centuries, especially through digital technology. Individuals may now experience virtual reality using devices which allow the exploration of imaginary worlds in a very immersive and convincing way. However, is this merely a recreational attempt to escape from everyday life or is it already a new human reality? This question has stimulated debate about whether virtual-reality is empowering and communicative or dangerously addictive and isolating (McGonigal 2015). The designers and the manufacturers of digital games, not unsurprisingly, have a very positive view of their products and their contribution to creating a desirable future (McGonigal 2011). Such games are more than escapist entertainment, and are also examples of a popular science which contributes solutions to the practical problems of every-day life. For example, in health care, general well-being, and in terms of individual independence, computers and associated machines are empowering, notably for those with disabilities.

As for the human body, according to Stern (2006), Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818) reflects a dilemma between dystopian anxieties and utopian ideals brought by new medicine: “Utopian optimism about the capacity of medicine to liberate and strengthen human beings is thus closely wedded to dystopian fear about medicine’s potential to reduce, objectify and ultimately commodity humankind”. (Stern 2006:63) He reflects on how close utopia and dystopia are which has parallels with how we face technology in human life. The contemporary excitement about virtual reality for instance, reawakens the philosophical problem of the mind-body relationship, first posed in the modern era by Descartes, and which remains one of the most intractable problems in philosophy. That said, the human body is considered by some to be an obstacle, obsolete, and even surpassed by new technologies. For the cybernaut the physical body is considered a prison when compared with virtual bodies which are immune to illness, to physical disabilities and, most importantly, to death (Breton 2003). However, more recent empirical research especially in cognitive science brings an impetus to the rejection of the mind-body dualism (Wilson and Foglia 2015). In this context, the notion of “embodied mind” (Varela et al. 1991) is inspired by the phenomenological tradition of the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty that considers the body as both a lived, experiential structure and as the milieu of cognitive mechanisms. Such a view also supports studies of the development of smart and interactive technology.

1.3 The development of artificial intelligence

Early attempts to develop artificial intelligence focussed on human capacity for thinking. In 1950 the English mathematician Alan Turing suggested replacing the question “can machines think?” by a game in which three participants talked by text. In this test, also known as “the imitation game”, if a machine could play as satisfactorily as a human person, it would demonstrate a sufficient condition for thinking (Turing 1950). Turing, believed that this problem: “….has the advantage of drawing a fairly sharp line between the physical and intellectual capacities of a man.” (1950: 434). As Guo (2015: 3) points out, Turing’s: “….specific understanding of human identity also indicates a scientific reconceptualization”, with the human mind abstracted into a series of symbolic operations, studied and modelled as mechanical instead of emotionally embodied superior beings. In his pioneering efforts towards intelligent machinery Turing investigated continually the sense of self. Subsequent research and developments in computers science have continued to provoke self-reflection: raising questions such as what it means to be alive, to think, to have emotions. As Guo comments: “….it is the sense of who and what we are that is constantly reconceptualized reflectively and creatively” (Guo 2015:7).

As we have noted, technologies of immersion in virtual reality are developing constantly and in different directions, bringing more complexity in terms of human engagement. It is possible to comprehend machines and robots being developed as ever more humanized versions, inspired by a philosophical tradition that sees mind and body as inseparable (Turkle 2011). There are robots that are supposed to understand human emotions, and which are capable of caring for the elderly and for children (Vincent 2014; Byford 2015); cuddling robots used as pets (Hudson 2013); and robots which play games, music; and are more than simply useful things, but considered almost partners. Although questionable, it has long been common for people to consider even their radio, television or music player as personal company. The robot or the machine is now often seen to represent in human reality what Karel Ĉapek (2014) imagined in his famous play R.U.R (Rossum’s Universal Robots), first published in 1920, a contemporary satire on the then apparently wholesale and confident acceptance of scientific materialism.

In practice, contemporary every-day life is full of relationships mediated by the interface between humans and machines. At the same time the threats or benefits of technology represent an expansion of what we now think about humanity. Machines and super computers continue to represent the wish to extend human capacities and, consequently, reduce struggle and suffering. It is the search for Utopia again. For example, exoskeletons and smart-devices such as the new Apple Watch represent a desire to amplify capacities through different levels of interface between humans and machines. However, as we see a trend towards developing an “humanity” through technology which simulates emotions and creativity, it is possible to visualize a parallel automation and alienation of humans. We incorporate already the rhythms and standardization of machines in our daily lives as a consequence of an industrialized and bureaucratized world, as Charlie Chaplin’s film satire “Modern Times” illustrated.

Moreover, it is possible that high-tech mediated relationships interfere in the development of perception of and human sensibility to the Other. As Sherry Turkle, who has spent over three decades studying the way people interact with machines, comments: “….we expect more from technology and less from each other.” (Turkle 2011: 295). Despite the huge evolution of games and digital tools exploring new ways of communication or networks, the simplification of relationships through or with computers and robots is shaping us as well and may lower expectations of relationships with our fellow humans.As Turkle says: “We are tempted, summoned by robots and bots, objects that address us as if they were people. And just as we imagine things as people, we invent ways of being with people that turn them into something close to things.” (Turkle 2011: 224). In a similar way, Vallor (2014) pays attention to the risk of moral deskilling as part of the ambiguous impact of new technologies in information and communications. She highlights three areas where moral skill and practical wisdom could be compromised: the impact on soldiers of the use of military drones and other autonomous weapons systems; the realm of moral attention of the new media practices of multitasking; and the impact on practices of human caregiving by the  potential offer of social robotics. Such issues reveal the social impact of technology on human relationships and are of great ethical significance.

However, as some critics point out, eliminating all machinery from our lives and returning to the “naked man”, as suggested by The Machine Stops, is a naïve and problematic solution. We are now immersed in technology and we must not forget how naturalized everyday human and technological interfaces have already become (Seegert 2010). Literature explores how machines became part of our lives and suggests a need to recover our humanity through reconsidering our embodiment and our physical and emotional encounters. Research on computers and robotics also focusses increasingly on understanding the consequences of interaction between humans and machines and among humans through new devices. Brassac (2006) highlights the contribution of a dialogical view of communication to addressing the relationship between artificial intelligence and society and the way computer-based devices are designed. Such elements suggest the importance of a better understanding of the notion of corporeality. Furthermore, it is valuable to explore how individuals make and sustain authentic relationships with the natural world, including other sentient beings, as well as with their fellow humans, which brings us to the notion of dialogue.

1.4 The lived-body and perception

The Machine Stops focuses on the consequences of excessive dependence on machinery and the human body is represented first as a “swaddled lump of flesh”. For Kuno, a main character in the story, the exploration of a different world begins with him being made aware of his body. Forster reminds us that our body is the first way through which we establish a relationship with the world: “Man is the measure. .... Man’s feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the measure for ownership, his body is the measure for all that is lovable and desirable and strong” (Forster 1947). There are many philosophical approaches to this but none are free of difficulties. Contemporary discourses reinforce old debates and represent the dilemma of Cartesian dualism (Murray and Sixsmith 1999) that we have noted. In Passions of the Soul, published originally in 1649, René Descartes (1989) compares the human body with an automaton, a machine that moves by itself like a watch, a metaphor which is still very apt. Indeed, the idea of the human body as a machine or as an object is found more generally in Western science (Hogen 2009). Using a different approach, the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1992) points out that the body is our first and most natural technical object. But it is not a simple object; and he argues that cultural factors also shape our bodies and our behaviour, crucial when we consider the interface between humans and machines. The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel (2007) also points out the possibility of an instrumental use of our body, but in one dimension only. Human corporeality carries the mystery of being and having. He suggests that incarnation is a key element in thinking about being. “Of this body, I can neither say that it is I, nor that it is not I, nor that it is for me (object).” (2007:11–12). Marcel (2007) emphasizes our engagement with the world and criticises a detachment or alienation, supposed by science. From another perspective, the English anthropologist Mary Douglas (1988) highlights the human need for distinct boundaries. She analysed the ideas of pollution and taboo in different cultures and found that ambiguity and change are uncomfortable as they may be linked with insecurity and weaken of our perceptions of life. It is interesting that, for Douglas, the human body is a special element which represents both order and disorder, with its boundaries especially dangerous. However, if we use a phenomenological approach, uncertainty makes it possible to recognise our ambiguity as a human being and opens up the possibility to learn from this experience.

Nowadays, the human body has a strong presence in the social imaginary and in the mass media. On the one hand it highlights our corporeality, but paradoxically it also indicates objectification, which opens the way to social practices such as slavery, pornography, and prostitution. The improvement of control and attention in relation to the human body demonstrates even more uncertainty. Richardson (2010) claims that robotic creation is a mimetic process. According to her, humanoid robots are extensions of human psychosocial bodies and, despite the fact that some robots have massive capacities of memory or strength, they fail in what are very simple tasks for humans (see “DARPA Robotics Challenge 2015” commented on by Dalton 2015). We still do not understand fully the complexity of the living body in the world, which explains the failure of some machines to imitate human behaviour convincingly; and also the failure to explain human corporeality in terms of mechanical metaphors. Our lived-body is much more than machinery, not only because of specific performance, but also because a human being is complex, changing constantly through interaction with the world and with the Other. There remain also questions about the Human Machine, from the implant of plates and screws to sophisticated artificial organs, bombs, and prosthetics. But, the fundamental problem in thinking about the body as a machine, as proposed by Descartes, is the way we understand corporeal schema. As we have noted, the human body is not simply the sum of its parts and our interaction with the world is much more complex than cause-effect laws. Yet, technology responds to the demand for improved performance and highlights the instrumental view of the body. For instance, more and more para-athletes have hybrid bodies made up for high performance. The design of prosthetics, in this case, does not intend to reproduce shape and manner of human body, but to amplify performance (Kim 2004).

However, our lived-body, as a being engaged with the world, brings to life the objects around it. We extend our corporeality to the objects that take part in our human projects; in the same way athletes incorporate sportive equipment (Merleau-Ponty 1962). As it is alive, the body is much more conscious of itself than the individual may think. We do not need to command it or interpret signs objectively for it to deal with the world in everyday life. It organizes itself in space and time. On the other hand, we can also think about the body in the way we think about things. However, if our body is merely an object, then who speaks for it? We cannot say that our body is one of our qualities like an accessory; instead our corporeality is the starting point for all our qualities, “it is that by which there are objects” (Merleau-Ponty 1962: 105). Consequently, the ambiguity in which we live in relation to our body allows us to live in a perceptive world that is also ambiguous. It is not enough to say “I am my body” to make clear our place in the world. I do not say me and my body, I cannot think about myself as distinct from my body, even though I say: this is my body. This confusing relationship with our corporeality is also the point from which Gabriel Marcel thinks about our relationship with the world when he says: “The primary object with which I identify myself, but which still eludes me, is my own body.” (Marcel 2007: 163). Our body is neither object nor subject, but is a mode of presentation. Hence, we cannot reduce our body to its instrumental possibilities. It indicates what I am and the way I am, our personal existence (Schrag 1988). Our condition is not that of an objective body, but a living body which inhabits space and time and so reconfigures them (Merleau-Ponty 1962).

A phenomenology of corporeality makes it possible to understand that the body does not disappear into cyberspace or is replaced by the use of apparatus: corporeality is instead redefined (Ortega 2007). The lived-body is the point of reference of a being-in-the-world (Merleau-Ponty 1962). We are able to extend bodily boundaries to include devices and technology, while this indicates how difficult it is to determine objective boundaries for the body. The human body does not represent a thing but an attitude; it is the presentation of a subject (Merleau-Ponty 1962). Merleau-Ponty proposes also that perception, our connection with the world, does not come from the world or from our intimate elaboration of it. Perception comes from our experience of participation in the world. Hence, the way we perceive the world is not an innate ability but is acquired. It is not a passive reaction to the world. Our ‘gaze’, for instance, extends bodily boundaries, interrogates and touches the world with all our senses. “The gaze gets more or less from things according to the way in which it questions them, ranges over or dwells on them”. Perception is acquiring a certain style of perceiving, a new use of one’s own body; our experiences enrich and reorganize the way we perceive the world (Merleau-Ponty 1962: 177). Such an understanding of perception helps us comprehend the complexity of our dialogical condition.

Therefore, we learn ways of inhabiting space and time through living the world, which is not exterior to our body, but integrated with our existence. Merleau-Ponty (1962) distinguishes between spatiality of position and spatiality of situation, which helps us think about virtual relationships. Spatiality does not refer to a position in a geometrical space, so the world is not a space for displacement, but a space that extends through our actions and the meaning elaborated by us and others (Bicudo 2009). Merleau-Ponty argues that we have the power to reckon with any possible environment or, as Romdenh-Romluc says, we are able to “imbue a possible or imagined environment” with bodily significance, because we are able to access our motor-skills in relation to that represented environment (2007: 56). It is possible to conceive different horizons as a background against which to orientate our actions. We extend our corporeality according to the projects in which we are engaged, but it is our presence in the world and the relationships made there that provide the elements for such extension. It is important to consider this complexity as it leads to the notion that we learn how to see the world through seeing it. It is necessary to exercise our vision, which means also that the type of mediation can enrich or impoverish such learning; and consequently the way we explore the world and develop our capacities. So, we should think about the kind of devices and mediated experiences we have and the understanding of humanity they carry. It is possible, even probable, that the machines we create “do not capture all nuances”, as Forster’s story explains, especially if we still do not know all the nuances to which we are ourselves subject.

If our connection with the world is mediated strongly we may lose part of its complexity. As the modes of contact change, so changes the experience itself and “because all contact must be mediated somehow, it does not follow that no value distinctions can be made between different modes of mediation” (Seegert 2010: 45). Mediated ways of meeting allow different levels of complexity, and some may not be as complex and challenging as face-to-face meetings in uncontrolled environments. Despite mediation, being-in-the world is related to our openness to other beings. The Other brings surprise, difference and even discomfort since we need to deal with questions for which there are no ready-made answers. But this is what gives us the opportunity to go beyond what we already are. It is not avoiding dilemmas, but how we deal with them that shows our human potential through dialogue; and exploring our dialogical condition helps us understand its power.

1.5 Dialogue and its possibilities

In E. M. Forster’s story, “People never touched one another.” We can consider this a metaphor for dialogue. Although there is some appeal to humanize machines, our relationship with them frequently suggests a classical “I-It” situation. The relation I-It is a subject-object relationship and can be between man and objects, but also between human beings when one takes the place of the object. It is an objective relationship in which one uses the Other instrumentally. I-It is an experience of knowledge, utility and causality (Buber 1972: 2002). However, a genuine dialogue is achieved through an “I-Thou” relationship in which there is no superior and where there is openness to difference and to change. This includes the possibility and willingness to touch one another. Buber (2002) describes the attitude of perceiving the Other as “becoming aware”. It means to give the status of knowledge to someone or something that does not come from an objective way of understanding. It is not communication in the traditional sense of sender—message—receptor. What is most important is what arises from the relationship. It is not an inner process or a simple reaction to an external stimulus, it is an encounter. The relation I-Thou is a relation of openness, directness, mutuality and presence. It can happen at any moment between fellow humans, but also with animals, plants, objects, art-works, and so on. It is impossible to anticipate or predict what will happen; it is a process only possible in relationship. Guilherme and Morgan (2009: 567) emphasize that: “Buber rejects any sort of sharp dualism between the I–Thou and I–It relation; that is, for Buber, there is always an inter-play between the I–Thou and the I–It, rather than an either/or relation between these foundational concepts”. A primary word I-It is in accordance with Mankind’s will to be powerful and to master objects and knowledge. This attitude will be disruptive if such mastery robs humans of the reality of their own I: “… without It man cannot live. But he who lives with It alone is not a man.” (Buber 1972: 34).

A problem with technology seems to be how everyday interfaces can change the way we first perceive the world; and the possibility that with certain types of mediation there is a loss of connection with the Other (Seegert 2010). For instance, Breton (2003) points out that the cyberspace is an imaginary, but nonetheless real world, where the frontiers are blurred and the Other exists through the interface of communication, but without a physical body. The relationship with the world is obliterated by the relationship with data. It is a relatively simplified world in which it is possible to experience countless different situations without compromising oneself. Meetings through different devices usually use simplified symbols, often with a preponderance of visual or of sonority signs. These virtual worlds, most of the time, may be lived without any great consequences. Physical encounters, on the other hand, require the respect of very complex social rules, an effort towards what is appropriate for approaches, the understanding of emotions and expressions, empathy as well as sympathy. In sum, it is a very complex mode of communication that involves our whole sensorial body. So, in a controlled or limited environment this possibility of creation is eliminated from the beginning. However, we cannot click on a “new life” solution each time the “game is over” in our actual life.

Virtual and physical meetings are both real and bring consequences, but they are very different from each other. A virtual meeting may protect one from the unexpected, but the unexpected is also what brings us the possibility of learning and of enhancing ourselves. Some studies already show the increasing difficulty of making strong connections among humans, considering the fragility of relationships through virtual networks in the consumer age (Bauman 2003). For example, in her research on the use of technology (2011) Turkle, found many examples of children asking for more attention from their relatives, or adults, and complaining of loneliness despite their numerous virtual friendships. However, some users of virtual connections describe it as easier and safer than having actual meetings, as they do not need to deal with “real faces” and can leave the conversation at any moment, without meaningful consequence. This may also be seen in people’s readiness to engage in abusive behaviour through virtual communication which they would be reluctant or cautious to do in a physical encounter. In a virtual world people are performing a character or an avatar, while computers or mobile devices are not a substitute for opening a dialogue with all the nuances a face-to-face encounter encourages. In Turkle’s research (2011) most youths preferred texting instead of calling as it does not take too much time and there is no necessary further commitment. In other words, they are in control of a conversation which keeps a distance between them and the Other. It reminds us again of the desperate attempt for dialogue between Kuno and his mother: “‘I have called you before, mother, but you were always busy or isolated. I have something particular to say.’ ‘What is it, dearest boy? Be quick. How could you not send it by pneumatic post?’” (Forster 1947).

Technology has increased our possibility of making initial contact with each other through new facilities and possibilities. However it should not replace actual meetings, that cannot be controlled or edited. Moreover, it is when we are surprised and hesitate that we need to be creative, which is the richness of dialogue. In such dialogue we face not only the potential of surprise from the Other, but we need the Other to learn how to deal with our own ambiguity. Being among people is challenging and this kind of encounter brings novelty to us. Again Vallor suggests: “….that whatever defects new social media may suffer, they are likely more often mirrors of existing cultural sources of moral apathy, and abdication of critical inquiry, than they are causes”. However this mirroring “may amplify the damage to our capacities as independent practical reasoners”. (Vallor 2012: 197). Deeper and constant reflection on the challenging and nurtured character of human relationships is necessary. An emotional connection is a challenge; it needs work, engagement, care about the Other, and nourishment. Developing friendship or a marriage for instance involves living the encounter with all the complexity and expressivity that it requires. It is necessarily a dialogical relationship and the struggle that comes with dialogue is also its power. This is why: “Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face and talk about the hopes that are in my mind” is an appeal for human commitment and dialogue from Kuno to his mother.

1.6 Conclusion

The cultural world we create is the condition of both our constraint and of our freedom. It is possible to argue that, as we extend our corporeality to objects around us, a world hyper-mediated by technology will also change the way we perceive the world. On the other hand, our relationships depend also on openness to encounter, mutuality and exchange. Furthermore, each decision brings unexpected consequences to which humans respond with fresh solutions that modify the problems. So: “….there is no situation without hope, no choice which terminates these deviations, or which can exhaust man’s inventive power and put an end to his history” (Merleau-Ponty 1973: 23). In a similar way, when considering Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogical education and its potential for conflict resolution, Morgan and Guilherme (2014: 37) raise the prospect of hope:

“Humanity may not be able to find earthly perfection, but it can find improvement that will make its lot more civilised and therefore more bearable. This is achievable through a humanistic education that provides the capacity of living in co-operation and harmony with one another, as well as the knowledge and skills necessary to material improvement and its sustainability. These are the links that connect aspiration and hope, through education, to the prospect of a better, utopian future; even if, like the horizon, it can never be reached finally.”

Forster’s story remains relevant to us as it considers human distress and fears for the future. It is a fiction, but the author’s intention is to share with us an emotional truth which anguished him and by extension humanity. The understanding of human challenges, choices, limits, consequences, possible new starting points, is one of the functions of literature and of art in general. Humanity’s fear of machinery may represent the anguish of dealing with the extension of human questions. Forster’s story is a classic example of how to confront such human dilemmas. In a similar way, facing this new reality of advanced technology is another way to learn about ourselves as we create machinery, computers, and robots according to our expectations. We extend our range of possibilities through technology, but we do not know necessarily know how to deal with the consequences that accompany this. We suggest that understanding the possibilities and consequences of authentic dialogue helps us make the relationship of people through technology more humane. The challenge made by Forster at the beginning of his story: “Imagine if you can” - is a key to understanding the capacity we have as humans to find solutions to unanticipated problems.