Okay, so I guess I was not totally impressed by the story, but I think that is because I've read so many like this, but, but, but, when I consider the date it was written and find that it still holds up pretty well I'm very impressed.
I guess it's the typical advance technology (for whatever reason) until you rely on it completely and then when it fails civilization is doomed -- a casualty of it's own progress.
Here are a couple discussion/analysis links I posted in the voting thread.
http://wiki.english.ucsb.edu/index.p...tions#See_Also
and
http://www.pkwy.k12.mo.us/west/teach...ng/machine.pdf