E. M. Forster wrote his short story "The Machine Stops" in 1909. The story posits a world where man has retreated from his former existence on the surface of the earth to life in the metallic belly of a huge subterranean machine which feeds, clothes, educates and connects its individually isolated inhabitants.

Forster's Machine has been understood as an analogy for many things, and I am far from the first to draw a link between his gargantuan contraption and the internet of today and tomorrow.

This website is the culmination of thoughts and conversations on the topic, "What is the internet, and computer technology in general, doing to the way human beings behave, think and communicate?" For those who like clunky academic terms, this falls under the category of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC).

The content has been very much stimulated by a series of books and websites on CMC issues. All are listed as part of the Bibliography, but two to highlight as specifically inspirational are Jaron Lanier's You are not a Gadget and Adam N. Joinson's Understanding the Psychology of Internet Behvaiour. Both are sceptical about certain paths down which the internet is leading us, but both readily embrace what the authors identify as positive aspects of the phenomenon too. My aim is to achieve a similar effect, but in a conscious effort to keep the features and op eds coming, thereby cataloguing the effects of CMC on humanity as they happen.

I also want to make predictions and forecasts about the future of mankind in relation to communications technology. The three corner-stones of my approach could be identified as Sociology, Linguistics and Psychology, though obviously there is considerable overlap between these.

I am no sociologist, linguist, psychologist or professional programmer. I studied English Language and Literature at university, to BA degree level. However, my interest in this subject is long-nurtured and, having noted that only a few very similar projects or blogs exist already, I decided I might as well weigh in to the debate. If anyone knows of like-minded websites, incidentally, I would be grateful to hear about them.

I have no conclusive opinion about the goodness or badness of the internet, and I never will. It is simply something vast and multifarious that we have initiated as a globalised society. It has good and bad in it. My job, I suppose, is to keep a look out for the bits (and bytes...) that are changing us. What will quickly become clear from reading any of the articles on this website, or any of the material in my bibliography, is that the internet, and other forms of communications technology, have already begun to change us massively and promise - or threaten - to continue to change us. To justify the somewhat ominous title of this website, I would say that it serves a function in stimulating attention being given to the topic. And then again, perhaps what we are seeing is something like the pre-narrative history to Forster's story. In which case, this only the beginning. We are of the age when the Machine began.

Chris Baraniuk
November 2010