Il Dominio della Macchina: dagli scenari ipotetici di Erewhon alla realtà delle piattaforme digitali di The Circle

Abstract

Throughout dystopian literature it is possible to identify meditations and anxieties concerning the relationship between Man and the Machine along with its present and future developments. In a globalised world, dominated by the digital sphere and, maybe, on the verge of giving rise to artificial intelligence, the present article aims to retrace the evolution of these concerns throughout dystopian literature, putting them in relation with recent technological developments. It will focus specifically on four works: Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872), E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops (1911), Michael Frayn’s A Very Private Life (1968) and Dave Eggers’s The Circle (2013). Each has addressed Man’s dependence on the Machine and its eventual takeover, starting from Butler’s philosophical and speculative considerations and moving on to more concrete scenarios in which the relationship between Man and Machine has acquired the shape of the social and technological landscape we inhabit.