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Rachel Berger is a designer in California. Lately, she’s been into current events, reading and writing, architecture, technology, cities, politics, identity, and fiber.

The Horror of Direct Experience: Cyberpunk Bodies and “The Machine Stops”

for Cyberpunk Culture Conference
2020

A lecture about “The Machine Stops,” E. M. Forster’s masterful science fiction novella from 1909, which has long been lauded for its prescient descriptions of electronic communication technology. Forster’s story takes on new significance in the context of a scholarly examination of cyberpunk culture and of the contemporary world’s fitful journey out of pandemic-imposed lockdown.
reading and writing, technology

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“When a person pursues ‘the bodiless exultation of cyberspace,’ who or what is left behind?”