What if the machine did stop?

I really liked the premise of The Machine Stops. I think the concepts Forster explores in his futuristic piece are quite relevant to today's world. Writings about the future almost always over-estimate the abilities of the projected era (we're supposed to have taken jet-packs to 5th grade right?) but that doesn't mean that the possibilities they foretell for a future time period are irrelevant. Imagine the state of sheer panic around the world if the internet were to suddenly fail. The impact would be enormous, and probably surprising in some ways. I think Forster picked up on a fundamental goal of human nature: convenience, and took that goal to it's absolute extreme. It's difficult to imagine letting convenience so rule our lives that we are reduced to living in pods beneath the earth, but consider just how far technological conveniences have taken us, even compared to our parents' generation. You can imagine, as Forster did back in 1909, the frightening trajectory society might follow if we do eventually give up our self-reliance to machines.