--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: '056'
+title: Player Piano
+date: January 22, 2017
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: reading
+---
+
+Player Piano represents Vonnegut's attempt to predict the future, a
+prediction which has proven to be mostly accurate with respect to
+present day. Its ingredients are typically Vonnegutian in nature, at
+least as far as I can tell; and I can't tell too much, since I've only
+read Cat's Cradle in addition to this one. But let's stick to the
+subject.
+
+The first ingredient of the novel is maybe Vonnegut's obsession with the
+war, or at least *a* war. War in general makes people go nuts, but this
+war in particular coerced people, and in particular the so-called
+"engineers and managers"[^1] into genuine ingenuity and whatnot. So the
+second ingredient follows naturally: a post-war America with its social
+particularities and peculiarities.
+
+The third ingredient is a narrative told from a mostly-omni-scient point
+of view, in fact comprising two (eventually) interweaving narrative
+threads. Player Piano tells the story of Dr.[^2] Paul Proteus, "engineer
+and manager", but as an aside provides an outside perspective through
+the Shah of Bratpuhr, who just happens to be visiting the US during the
+unfolding of the novel's main events. The Shah and his nephew, and in
+fact the whole thread is a plot device created to illustrate that
+America's "progress" is for naught[^3].
+
+The fourth ingredient is satire. Satire of American democracy, satire of
+"progressive" "liberal" socialism, satire of [endless PR][marketing],
+and, the most visionary and the best of them all, satire of "computers
+will make the world a better place"[^4]. To quote:
+
+> "This is EPICAC XIV," said Halyard. "It's an electronic computing
+> machine -- a brain, if you like. This chamber alone, the smallest of
+> the thirty-one used, contains enough wire to reach from here to the
+> moon four times. There are more vacuum tubes in the entire instrument
+> than there were vacuum tubes in the State of New York before World War
+> II." He had recited these figures so often that he had no need for the
+> descriptive pamphlet that was passed out to visitors.
+>
+> Khashdrahr told the Shah.
+>
+> The Shah thought it over, snickered shyly, and Khashdrahr joined him
+> in the quiet, Oriental merriment.
+>
+> "Shah said," said Khashdrahr, "people in his land sleep with smart
+> women and make good brains cheap. Save enough wire to go to moon a
+> thousand times."
+
+and
+
+> [...] "In order to be self-supporting, a book club has to have at
+> least a half-million members, or it isn’t worth setting up the
+> machinery -- the electronic billers, the electronic addressers, the
+> electronic wrappers, the electronic presses, and the electronic
+> dividend computers.”
+>
+> [...]
+>
+> "Well, a fully automatic setup like that makes culture very
+> cheap. Book costs less than seven packs of chewing gum. And there are
+> picture clubs, too -- pictures for your walls at amazingly cheap
+> prices. Matter of fact, culture's so cheap, a man figured he could
+> insulate his house cheaper with books and prints than he could with
+> rockwool. Don't think it’s true, but it’s a cute story with a good
+> point."
+>
+> "And painters are well supported under this club system?" asked
+> Khashdrahr.
+>
+> "Supported -- I guess!" said Halyard. "It's the Golden Age of Art,
+> with millions of dollars a year poured into reproductions of
+> Rembrandts, Whistlers, Goyas, Renoirs, El Grecos, Dégas, da Vincis,
+> Michelangelos ..."
+>
+> "These club members, they get just any book, any picture?" asked
+> Khashdrahr.
+>
+> "I should say not! A lot of research[^5] goes into what's run off,
+> believe me. Surveys of public reading tastes, readability and appeal
+> tests on books being considered. Heavens, running off an unpopular
+> book would put a club out of business like that!" He snapped his
+> fingers ominously. "The way they keep culture so cheap is by knowing
+> in advance what and how much of it people want[^6]. They get it right,
+> right down to the color of the jacket. Gutenberg would be amazed."
+
+and
+
+> No cabs had bothered to meet the unpromising train. Paul phoned the
+> cab company, but no one answered. He looked helplessly at the
+> automatic ticket vendor, the automatic nylon vendor, the automatic
+> coffee vendor, the automatic gum vendor, the automatic book vendor,
+> the automatic newspaper vendor, the automatic toothbrush vendor, the
+> automatic Coke vendor, the automatic shoeshine machine, the automatic
+> photo studio, and walked out into the deserted streets on the
+> Homestead side of the river.
+
+and I could go on for a long time with this.
+
+The climax of the whole story is reached when a bunch of derps delude
+themselves that they can change "the system" by throwing a
+revolution. And they do, and the coup sort of succeeds, that is, until
+[the slaves][freedom] start going back to the initial process of making
+their own lives miserable. Other than that, Vonnegut might have gone
+wrong in a place or two; I don't remember exactly where and how, so that
+makes it mostly unimportant.
+
+To sum this up, the novel is recommended reading for those who don't
+understand why we sane people don't want to run Windows and rely on
+Google, Wikipedia and "on [the Cloud][cloud-software]" in general. To
+further sum it up, Vonnegut's novel is a nice story of how technology is
+fundamentally a tool of oppression, and he who controls it is invested
+with a great amount of power, at least until it all fails.
+
+[^1]: Had Vonnegut published Player Piano as his last novel in the
+ 2000s, instead of his first in the '50s, he could have called them
+ "CTOs and CEOs" or some other equally boring Newspeak
+ designation. Fortunately for him, he expired shortly before the
+ 2010s came about.
+
+[^2]: They're all Doctors and whatchamacallthem over there.
+
+[^3]: What is Bratpuhr, and who are the Kolhouri, you ask? Well, as
+ fictional as they are, they also serve to emphasize a certain
+ misconception of the USian ilk, that on one hand there's America,
+ and on the other there's the rest of the Third World, with no Second
+ World in-between worth knowing and exploring to the
+ averager. Bratpuhr is, like Romania or Papua New Guinea, a sort of
+ soup: there's no oil there, and thus no need for them to be
+ "civilized"* by the "civilized"* Western folk.
+
+ \-\-\-
+ \* By which I mean, in the words of the great Frank Zappa,
+ overeducated shitheads.
+
+[^4]: With variations such as "Make America Great Again" and whatever
+ else you will.
+
+[^5]: Research, like in today's "big data", "analytics", "data science",
+ machine "learning", etc., etc. Basically all the tools required to
+ reduce the average person to a [statistical model][google-stupid].
+
+[^6]: In case you were wondering, this is exactly how the so-called
+ movie and music industries have been working in the last five
+ decades or so. But-but-but, what about the Beatles and the Pink
+ Floyds, the King Crimsons and the Frank Zappas spawned by these
+ industries? you will ask.
+
+ Sure, these were honest outliers, but the only thing their success
+ did was to further the idiotic belief that there is a recipe to
+ create art. This is of course a clear semantic contradiction, since
+ art is by definition [the very best there is][on-art] and
+ [culture][on-security] is by definition that which distinguishes
+ [humans from sheep][humanity]. Once the best becomes accessible to
+ the masses, it stops being the best, "the best being accessible"
+ being itself a paradox.
+
+ As somewhat of a side note, the quote can also be interpreted as
+ machines becoming the actual creators of art, which is fashionable
+ nowadays with Google using data-based techniques to imitate poetry,
+ music and whatnot.
+
+[marketing]: /posts/y02/043-on-the-failure-of-marketing.html
+[google-stupid]: /posts/y02/046-google-is-making-you-stupid.html
+[on-art]: /posts/y00/004-on-art.html
+[cloud-software]: /posts/y02/041-cloud-software-is-unreliable-ii.html
+[on-security]: /posts/y02/04a-on-security.html
+[humanity]: /posts/y01/032-your-worth-to-humanity.html
+[freedom]: /posts/y03/04f-freedom-is-slavery.html
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