Player Piano

Details
Our first session starts fittingly enough with Vonnegut's first novel: Player Piano

To ensure you'll get the most of the discussion, please try to finish the novel before attending. If you can't, don't worry!

Quote
“The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings, not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems.”

Description
Like most great sci-fi, Player Piano (1952) is horrifyingly prescient:

"Set in a near-future America where automation has eliminated most jobs, the story follows Paul Proteus, an engineer caught between his privileged position managing the machines and his growing horror at what society has become.

Computers and automated systems handle nearly all production and decision-making, leaving the majority of the population either unemployed or relegated to meaningless busywork.

Paul explores what happens to human dignity, purpose, and connection when efficiency becomes the highest value, and recognizes that a system that treats people as redundant has forgotten what makes life worth living."