It's interesting, to me, what prompted Forster to write this. From the "themes" section [1] of the Wikipedia page about the story: In the preface to his Colle

It's interesting, to me, what prompted Forster to write this. From the "themes" section [1] of the Wikipedia page about the story: In the preface to his Collected Short Stories (1947), Forster wrote that "'The Machine Stops' is a reaction to one of the earlier heavens of H. G. Wells." In The Time Machine, Wells had pictured the childlike Eloi living the life of leisure of Greek gods whilst the working Morlocks lived underground and kept their whole idyllic existence going. In contrast to Wells' political commentary, Forster points to the technology itself as the ultimate controlling force. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops#Themes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops#Themes