Anyone who uses the internet should read this prophetic short story, written—rather extraordinarily—long before computers and the digital age, long before television and video, at a time when even radio was only in its infancy, before the First World War's powerful stimulus to modernism and technology. 

Written in response to the optimistic futurism of books like H. G. Wells' A Modern Utopia, "The Machine Stops" was originally published in autumn 1909 in the Oxford and Cambridge Review (Vol. 8).  Later it was included as the first story in Forster's second short story collection The Eternal Moment (1928) and has continuously since then been included in science fiction and short story anthologies.

More importantly, and with an irony that Forster would have enjoyed, "The Machine Stops" is widely reproduced and discussed on the internet, and therefore a story which is rather unusual among his works may very well now be Forster's best known work. 

The story has never been out of print and is widely available on the net, either to hear or read online or to download and save or print. 

For example:

[The Machine Stops: free downloads]

The stills here are from a 1966 BBC television version of "The Machine Stops."