The Machine Stops

A single global Machine supplying every physical and social need on demand.

People sit alone in hexagonal underground cells. They message each other constantly, and give lectures — mostly lectures about other people's lectures, since direct experience is considered coarse. Travel is possible and thought vulgar. Nobody has business anywhere.

Enforced idleness — Everything is provided, so nothing is left to do — and that turns out to be unbearable.

Written in 1909 as a rebuke to H. G. Wells' optimism. It describes video calls, on-demand media, and the social collapse that follows, roughly a century early.