The Machine Stops

A short science fiction story set in a far future where humanity lives underground, each person alone in a small room, tended by a vast Machine that supplies every need. Communication happens through screens, and direct experience is regarded with distaste. Vashti, a devoted believer in the system, is troubled when her son Kuno asks to meet her in person and speaks of wanting to see the surface of the Earth. Written in 1909, it is a remarkably prescient warning about technology, isolation and the loss of real human contact.