Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut was his first novel, first published in 1952. Early fiction from Vonnegut is told in a more straightforward fashion than Vonnegut readers will be accustomed to from his later works, but his imagination and wit are still unmistakable.

This is a dystopian work describing a United States after a third war where machines have taken the place of 90% of industrial workers. Government work available to displaced workers comes from either the Army, emasculated and bureaucratic, or the reconstitution and reclamation corps, the Reeks and the Wrecks, a civil organization where workers have military-esque occupational titles such as asphalt layer first class and senior street sweeper.

Funny and thought provoking this ushered in a long and prolific career for Vonnegut.

Vonnegut wrote Player Piano in his late twenties, and it is the first novel in his long and successful literary career. At this stage, the author is still relatively “well behaved”: the structure of the story is reasonably straightforward, events occur in chronological succession, the protagonist is, for the most part, in full possession of his mental faculties. In short, there is still some way to go before the Slaughterhouse-Five meta-fictional, po-mo craziness. However, the distinctive features of Vonnegut’s style are already there: snappy, fat-free sentences, crisp, quick-witted dialogues, and a generally sardonic outlook on life and the human condition — the Shah of Bratpuhr subplot (slightly reminiscent of Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes) is priceless. Also, the use of the ritornello “And I love you, Anita” foreshadows the “And so it goes” in his upcoming masterpiece.

The subject of this novel is worth noticing as well. Player Piano falls into the speculative-fiction genre: in an unspecified near future, American corporations and industries are getting increasingly automated, computerised; managers and engineers are the cream of society, and the rest have, by and large, lost their jobs to machines — soon enough, one might reckon, engineers and managers will lose their grip as well... Interestingly, Vonnegut compares this profound socio-economic shift to the destruction of Native-American cultures at the hand of white settlers, as if modern society was, in its turn, about to be subjugated:

The world had changed radically for the Indians . . . It had become a white man’s world, and Indian ways in a white man’s world were irrelevant. It was impossible to hold the old Indian values in the changed world. The only thing they could do in the changed world was to become second-rate white men or wards of the white men. (LoA, pp. 259-260)

Vonnegut had seen mechanised warfare in action, during his time in Europe; he also probably saw it coming in the workplace, while employed at GE as a PR manager. But devising, as early as 1952, a world were computerised technology and algorithms would practically control (for better or for worse) every aspect of our lives was nothing short of visionary. His description of corporate power dynamics — especially the competitive “organisational development” off-site episode —, the pervasive automation of Western capitalism, and the gradual disenfranchisement and loss of livelihood of the unemployed working class (the “Reeks and Wrecks”, the “Takaru”) as opposed to the bling-bling 400, is probably more to the point and familiar today than it was in the 1950s. Vonnegut’s perspective on revolutions is utterly disillusioned, however. But underneath it all, this is the book of a compassionate humanist.

In many ways, Player Piano borrowed its dystopian views and storyline from Huxley’s Brave New World and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Over the years, though, Asimov’s Robot Series has almost completely overshadowed the influence of Player Piano in contemporary popular culture. This influence still nevertheless comes through in such recent films and series as Ex Machina, the Swedish sci-fi drama Real Humans, or the excellent Westworld HBO TV show.

Seriously, anything by Vonnegut is a must-read!

Scritto 70 anni fa e attuale in maniera spaventosa.

L'umanità descritta in questo romanzo è ormai schiava di una meccanizzazione esasperata, che ha privato gli esseri umani di un ruolo, di uno scopo, devastando la società e mettendo le persone una contro l'altra. I richiami al nostro presente sono a tratti inquietanti e precisi in maniera stupefacente, tranne per il fatto che a sostituirci, per il momento, sono le intelligenze artificiali e non i robot.

Personalmente le vicende di Paul mi hanno coinvolto fino a un certo punto, e nella prosa di Vonnegut, così come in "Mattatoio numero 5", c'è qualcosa che mi rallenta, impedendomi di entrare appieno nella storia, ma il tutto è compensato dalla visionarietà geniale eppure mostruosamente pragmatica di questo autore straordinario, capace di parlare del suo presente e del nostro futuro allo stesso tempo, scavando a fondo in tematiche che ci riguardano tutti, a prescindere dall'anno corrente.

The Cybernetic Script

One of the most important but least discussed consequences of WWII is an ideology. It is way of thinking that unites the political left and right, and even transcends the ideologies of Capitalism and Marxism with their apparent conflicts about the nature of human beings and their politics. It is an ideology that became and remains the dominant intellectual force in the world in my lifetime. This ideology goes by a name that is only occasionally used today and is probably recognised only by specialist professionals old enough to remember it: Cybernetics.

Cybernetics is the unnamed central character in Player Piano, where it goes incognito as 'know how' developed during the war. As a scientific discipline, cybernetics is about control. Its vocabulary has largely been assimilated into general usage - systems, feedback loops, requisite variety, algorithms. sustainability. In the year that Vonnegut was writing Player Piano (1951), cybernetics was the fashionable inter-disciplinary buzzword in fields as diverse as hormonal medicine, national government, industrial economics and computer design (not to mention player pianos). And of course, in Vonnegut's obvious subject: Robotics. The big names in the social sciences of the day - von Neumann, Ashby, Weiner, Bateson, Deming, Beer, to name just a few - all had cybernetic connections through the war-effort.

Vonnegut's prescience about the effects of cybernetic thinking for things like automated factories, computer-assisted design, self-driven cars, voice-recognition and expert systems are at least as good as anyone involved in the discipline at the time. But Vonnegut's real talent isn't predictive, it's prophetic. And his insights aren't about science, they are about ideology. He saw beneath the breathless press and stunning technological advances produced through cybernetics to how cybernetics was being used shape the manner in which human beings were to live with each other, whether they were conscious of this or not.

Cybernetics was always more than a discipline or method, or even a manner of thinking. Through general, tacit, but very real agreement on the issues of importance to be addressed, the only issues, cybernetics became an ideology, a framework, a rationale, most crucially a rationalisation of the exercise of power by the people who had power. These are the people Vonnegut identifies as the 'elite', technical managers and their distant superiors who tend the complex cybernetic control mechanisms.

But Vonnegut is far too perceptive to categorise the world simply into managers and those they manage. There is a reason why the very senior managers in Player Piano are kept vaguely in the background. They are the only people not subject to cybernetic demands. The only thing that cybernetics cannot be used for is the decision about what constitutes a successful result of the processes involved, about how to measure value. Player Piano was born in a world of the McCarthy hearings (alluded to in the phrase 'fellow travellers'), the most blatant attempt to institutionalise the definition of success until recent times.

Success is defined elsewhere than by the factory managers in Player Piano, in the higher reaches of corporate management, beyond the pay grade of a Proteus and his colleagues in Ilium (incidentally the Latin for guts, including the highly vulnerable testicles; as well as another name for Troy, of the treacherous horse). And however value is defined, it is not a process or a result to be tampered with in Vonnegut's world at the level of mere management professionals.

A successful result of a cybernetic process might be defined in terms of efficiency, or speed, or innovation, or profit, consumer satisfaction, or literally anything the human mind might conjure. Whatever it is, it is hard wired into the little tape loops that run each machine in Ilium's massive factories. But nothing within the discipline of cybernetics gave a clue as to which of these measures of success was appropriate, or best, or acceptable.

This is the lynchpin of Vonnegut's narrative. It is not mere Luddite sabotage of the machines that is the threat to Ilium's stability but rather changes to the criteria embedded in the tapes and the authority that creates them. It is the control boxes that must be kept locked and secure. These are the tabernacles in which the secret decisions about what constitutes value are hidden and from which these decisions invisibly control both the machines and the factory managers. It is these tiny sanctuaries not the gigantic integrated chains of machines that are the driving force of Vonnegut's fiction.

Except that this situation wasn't, and isn't, only a fiction. The separation of the management of cybernetically controlled systems and the choice of their criteria of success, that is to say, their value, is the core of cybernetics as an ideology. In both Player Piano and in the world as it has evolved, this separation has largely come to pass. Politically, this has gone largely unnoticed by those most affected by the ideology. Until of course very recently as demonstrated in the dramatic political events in Europe, North America, India, and, I think, even China

A key part of Vonnegut's narrative is the separation of what would come to be called the 99% from the corporate managerial class. The most interesting part of the script is the malaise that affects the 99%-ers. This malaise is spiritual rather than material. Although unemployed, the plebs are not homeless or starving.

But since the removal of the corporate ladder, which had given apparent purpose to life and by which they might have advanced (a central element of the post-war American Dream), they are dissatisfied and unruly. The most hopeful aspect of Player Piano is that they don't seem to want the corporate ladder back!

As a prophet not a forecaster, Vonnegut got some things wrong. What he mainly got wrong was the precise mode in which the cybernetic ideology was to play out. He reckoned, along with many philosophers and social scientists of the time, that the managerial elite would dominate through their control of manufacturing and transport. This is how the Robber Barons in the late 19th century and the Russian soviets had already done it.

What no one, literally no one, at the time anticipated was that even the manufacturing elite wouldn't be high enough up the cybernetic food chain to set the criteria for success. This would be left to the even more remote Captains of Finance not the contemporary Lords of Industry. Given that neither Karl Marx nor Frederik Hayek saw that one coming, we might want to overlook Vonnegut's slip.

Vonnegut couldn't see the impending shift because Finance in America, as everywhere else, was still Capitalist Finance in 1951. Not for a decade did cybernetics under a new heading of Corporate Finance, as a real discipline and an ideology, become identifiable as a visible intellectual force. And not for yet another decade was this force great enough to shift corporate power decisively from the capitalists who make things to the capitalists who finance things.

It is unarguable that today it is the likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley rather than General Motors or General Electric that dominate the world economy and a large portion of its social ambitions as well. The transition is complete. Same cybernetic ideology, just a different cast of corporate characters. And Vonnegut wrote the script. Unfortunately Trump not Proteus is leading the revolution.

----------------------------------
And just when you thought it's safe to drink the Kool-Aid:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-jobs...

Първокласно удоволствие. Ако това е първи роман, не искам и да мисля какви са следващите Да, все съм посягала към Кърт Вонегът и все не съм го взимала. И сега страшно се радвам за това, защото имам един проуктивен писател, който тепърва да ме погълне.

Брилянтна мисъл и страхотни формулировки в „Механично пиано“. Не са едно и две нещата, които ме въодушевиха силно. Но ей тея работи: „който се състезава с роби, става роб“, просто осмислят цялото ми битие на кървави интелектуални борби в живота.

Издателство „Кръг“ отново с безмилостна коректура! Корицата и превода няма и какво да ги обсъждаме :-)

You could see Vonnegut's genius in his first novel.

On a blog I read, the Devil Vet's been thinking about hope and hopelessness in dystopian fiction. I think Player Piano is good example of how hope plays into dystopian narratives. The Ghost Shirt Society of the book rises in rebellion against the soul-numbing mechanized society even though they know they will fail. Why? Simply to show that it can be done. That there can be light at the end of that tunnel, if power is wrested from the managers and engineers who hold it in that society. "Hope in hopelessness" indeed.

But then, that's one of Vonnegut's favorite themes (literally from the beginning, as we see) to kick around. You might have the whole world against you, you might know from the beginning that stretching your wings will just result in being shot out of the sky, but the exercise of whatever freedom you can snatch is worth the fall.

Of course, he didn't rely simply on ideas. The man could spin a yarn. The whole section of the book where Proteus has to go on an annual weekend team-spirit-building retreat had me chuckling through my anger. I hate that kind of workaday pep rally crap, and that particular scenario sounds like my idea of four days of hell. And the chapter in which Proteus buys a small, old school farm - thinking that will calm his need to get out of the "we are all cogs" system - and his wife takes it completely the wrong way sort of broke my heart. Though, I have to admit, I felt some for the wife - it's not like he spent any time communicating his feelings or situation to her.

The running thread of the Shah of Bratpuhr touring the US, with his guide in more and more dire straits, was a nice touch. Sometimes that kind of show-and-tell subplot can feel tacked on or unnecessary, but Vonnegut's storytelling allowed it to weave in and out of the major action.

final thought: No surprise, I agree with him. If you take away a person's chance to do for themselves, you take away a major reason to get out of bed every morning. I'm not saying we all have to work hard or die. I'm just saying, yeah, we all need that feeling of dignity that honest work can provide, whether for decent wages or just for our own benefit.

(epicdystopia.blogspot.com)

Vonnegut is a genius. Man's relationship with technology, class wars, struggle for purpose and meaning... Every issue addressed in this book is as relevant today as when it was first published. Best of all, Vonnegut is honest and real and funny and still manages to leave the reader with hope. Man, I wish he was still with us. The world could use his wisdom to help us deal with the strangeness that is 2020. Slaughterhouse Five has been one of my favorite books since high school. So glad I picked this one up this year.

Despite its science fiction trappings this is really a fun house look at the present. Writing in 1952, Vonnegut depicts a world where automation has rendered most jobs obsolete except for a small cadre of managers and engineers who administer the factories and create new machines. Those put out of their jobs are provided a safety net of medical care, housing, income, etc. but deprived of meaningful work they are resentful of the status quo. Of course this sounds prescient today with threats of AI takeover and presidential candidates lamenting jobs lost to China.

But really it's always been that way. Vonnegut knows that. He takes shots at all sides. But he's definitely tougher on "progress". It's a useful corrective. Growth has its costs. Beware executives holding team building activities. The problem is that a lot of those points are dulled by being buried in lectures masquerading as dialogue. The jokes often fall flat. He hits his stride in the second half and you can see the absurdist outlines of his later work in there.

In the "what they got wrong" department: in the far future it's still the 50s as far as women are concerned, Pittsburgh as the center of the the US economy and an outsize role in society for fraternal organizations: as Charles Murray points out in "Coming Apart" most Americans don't belong to them these days.

Some quotes:

“Well, what the heck,” said Buck. “I mean, they aren’t people. They don’t suffer. They don’t mind working.” “No. But they compete with people.” “That’s a pretty good thing, isn’t it—considering what a sloppy job most people do of anything?” “Anybody that competes with slaves becomes a slave,” said Harrison thickly, and he left.

----

“All right,” said Lasher, his voice low. “In the past, in a situation like this, if Messiahs showed up with credible, dramatic messages of hope, they often set off powerful physical and spiritual revolutions in the face of terrific odds. If a Messiah shows up now with a good, solid, startling message, and if he keeps out of the hands of the police, he can set off a revolution—maybe one big enough to take the world away from the machines, Doctor, and give it back to the people.”

For me this is an A-typical Vonnegut. This read did not flow the way his other books did for me. I couldn't really identify with any of the characters. While reading my mind would sometimes drift to ideas previously given to me in other books...like Atlas Shrugged or 1984...machine taking over etc. etc.....the 1% vs the 99% yada yada yada. I felt like he was trying to convert me rather than entertain me. I'm still a Vonnegut fan, but this one and me just dance well together....we didn't gee haw.....mgc

A story that could have been told in fewer words.

THE GREAT COMPLETIST CHALLENGE: In which I revisit older authors and attempt to read every book they ever wrote

Currently in the challenge: Margaret Atwood | Christopher Buckley | Daphne Du Maurier | Michel Houellebecq | John Irving | Kazuo Ishiguro | Shirley Jackson | Bernard Malamud | Tim Powers | Philip Roth | John Updike | Kurt Vonnegut

Although I read a handful of Kurt Vonnegut's '80s novels back when I was in college, almost thirty years ago now, this year will be the first time I've ever attempted to either read him comprehensively, read his really early works, or even learn more about him and his career history; and so that made it a big surprise last week to read his Wikipedia page for the first time and realize that he was actually considered a mid-tier Silver Age science-fiction author for the first five books of his career, all the way up to his 1969 breakout hit Slaughterhouse-Five. So in other words, not an Isaac Asimov but more a Frederik Pohl, with books that were loved by hardcore genre obsessives but that never really made a dent with the general public.

This is very clearly on display in his first-ever novel, 1952's Player Piano, which is shocking in hindsight precisely for what a so-so book it actually is, and how conventionally written it is, given how famous Vonnegut eventually became for both his unusual writing style and the high quality of his concepts. Ironically, the speculative novel is about a "world of the future" that has largely come to actually pass by 2018 -- an America where not only have most industrial and factory jobs been automated and are now run by robots, but even most white-collar jobs like writers, accountants and secretaries, Vonnegut envisioning a crazy far-future when computers can do things like (gasp!) catch typos in memos and automate tax preparation. In Vonnegut's world, pretty much the only humans left with actual jobs are computer engineers and their managers, eerily predicting the actual state of Silicon Valley in the 21st century; and while the rest of the country is still well taken care of, due to the socialized basic income that all this automation can now afford, it's left the US in a state of violent despondency over most people now no longer knowing their "purpose" in life, most former blue-collar workers now throwing themselves into their fraternal organizations like the Elks and the Rotary Club with a kind of zeal that has turned them almost into weaponized religious cults.

The novel is mostly notable now for the ways that Vonnegut correctly predicted much of the technology that would pass in the 65 years between then and now, even while badly misjudging what kind of effect this technology would have on society at large; he pictures this sea change in technology happening in a sociological bubble that completely stands still, leading to a shell-shocked populace who are utterly unequipped to adapt themselves to their rapidly changing times, while in reality over the last 65 years we've seen an America that has largely been able to successfully change its outlook and educational options to adapt to this rise in technological automation, giving us a contemporary US in 2018 that by and large is much wealthier and better-working than the barely functioning dystopia Vonnegut imagines in his book. (Also glaringly obvious to modern readers, Vonnegut's complete and total inability to predict in 1952 the rise of creative industries to replace all the factory workers and administrative peons of his own times -- designers, marketers, TV and film producers, craft artists, small business owners, "user experience" experts, basically all the modern job types that get lumped into the catch-all term "creative class.")

That makes the book problematic for contemporary readers, because it's hard to get over the schism here of Vonnegut describing a world that technologically works much like our real world does, but that in his case produces an Orwellian nightmare of a society that is perpetually on the brink of an ideologically based violent revolution; and like mentioned before, this is then compounded by the fact that his writing style here is barely above serviceable, a book that reads and feels exactly like the genteel Mid-Century Modernist relic that it actually is. According to his Wikipedia page, Vonnegut didn't develop his now iconic "Vonnegutian style" of writing until 1973's Breakfast of Champions, which apparently was the result of a nervous breakdown and an erroneous belief that that book was going to be the last of his career (but more on all this when we reach it); so while I work my way up to that point, I'm going to keep my expectations low for these more straightforward sci-fi novels from the start of his career, advice that I recommend to others as well who are making their way through his early books. Although I'm glad I now have it under my belt, I can't honestly say that I will ever take on Player Piano again, a reading experience that mostly left me anxious to get to Vonnegut's mature classics from later in his career.