Notes from Player Piano
Continuing my [recent dystopia kick](http://ryskamp.org/brain/books/notes-from-the-man-in-the-high-castle), I read Vonnegut’s _Player Piano_ based on his Luddite-ish comments in [an article in Inc. Technology](http://www.vonnegutweb.com/vonnegutia/interviews/int_technology.html):
> Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We’re dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go do something. [Gets up and dances a jig.]
I tend to sympathize with him on this, despite working on the web and believing in its potential to do great things. It’s so easy to get sucked into technology’s immersive embrace and lose all perspective, and so essential to remain in touch with our humanity and nature.
In _Player Piano_, Vonnegut visits a world where many people have lost touch, and those who recognize it fight the rising tide of technology. It’s eerily similar to some reactions of people today, from laws against video games to jihads against advanced countries.
And the conclusion of the book is probably accurate, and reminds me of the dramatically-unsatisfying end to the _Matrix_ movies. There will be no end to the allure of technological progress, and those who oppose it will have to make their own peace with it. Fortunately, our society has not reached the point of enforced machine domination that _Player Piano_ showed, so it remains up to each person how much of their human experience they choose to delegate to the machines.
### Notes
Just like my desire for more artistic “angst” a while back, and wondering if my life is too easy:
> “He watched his brother find peace of mind through psychiatry. That’s why he won’t have anything to do with it.”
“I don’t follow. Isn’t his brother happy?”
“Utterly and always happy. And my husband says somebody’s just _got_ to be maladjusted; that somebody’s got to be uncomfortable enough to wonder where people are, where they’re going, and why they’re going there.” – 212
Difference between [hard work and long work](http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/69/sgodin.html):
> “Everybody works at something. Getting out of bed’s work! Getting food off your plate and into your mouth’s work! But there’s two kinds of work, kid, work and _hard_ work. If you want to stand out, have something to sell, you got to do _hard_ work. Pick out something impossible and do it, or be a bum the rest of your life.” – Alfie, 233