The whole song is sort of a reference to Aldous Huxley's novel "Brave New World." It's about a future society that's basically about having pleasure and consuming resources. This is great of course, except that there's no real art or passion or anything left because no one feels pain anymore. Travis Morrison was probably just writing about the book and how he thinks that kind of future is extremely likely. People will ultimately choose constant pleasure and distraction over a life of hardship and pain that produces things that are poetic and beautiful.
On the other hand, in the book, there's no actual "Memory Machine," there's just a drug called "soma" which they take whenever they have any somewhat painful experiences. So it may not be completely based off the book.
The whole song is sort of a reference to Aldous Huxley's novel "Brave New World." It's about a future society that's basically about having pleasure and consuming resources. This is great of course, except that there's no real art or passion or anything left because no one feels pain anymore. Travis Morrison was probably just writing about the book and how he thinks that kind of future is extremely likely. People will ultimately choose constant pleasure and distraction over a life of hardship and pain that produces things that are poetic and beautiful.
On the other hand, in the book, there's no actual "Memory Machine," there's just a drug called "soma" which they take whenever they have any somewhat painful experiences. So it may not be completely based off the book.