Player Piano
by Kurt Vonnegut, Christian Rummel · first published 1952
50% recommend49% neutral1% critical
Why HN recommends it
Dystopian novel about a society run by engineers and machines where automation has left most people jobless; cited for its look at purpose, class divides and UBI, and suited to programmers wondering about automation.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a super computer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut - wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
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Kurt Vonnegut's works: The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, Player Piano, Jailbird, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater... Find the time to read Vonnegut.
on “Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?” ↗This whole discussion reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano. Sadly no such reference has been made yet. Maybe that's because not a lot of Germans have read it. Anyway, it sheds the whole discussion in a new light. The person in charge of education and research…
on “German Fascination With Degrees Claims Latest Victim: Education Minister” ↗Well before Krugman, it was Kurt Vonnegut. In 1952, he published his first novel Player Piano, which describes a society where most jobs are automated. There's a sharp class divide between the few "managers and engineers" who work and most people who live in an unemployed underclass. It's very…
on “America's upper middle class is growing” ↗…our teacher didn't just teach that. The class put substantial time into things like history of programming (e.g., Ada Lovelace), and the thing I remember most was that we read and discussed Vonnegut's "Player Piano". In hindsight, that class was formative.
on “What “Slaughterhouse-Five” Tells Us Now” ↗We could make them all read "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut. :) That's the subject of the whole novel, and it's a really great one.
on “Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go” ↗Regarding your first point, I don't have an answer. But, for a more ironic take on the issue, please read 'Player Piano' by Vonnegut. Regarding your second point, I addressed this in the other post, but post-scarcity economics seems to be the best 'thought experiment' as to what a future society would look like. I truly…
on “Amazon Reports First Quarterly Loss in 4 Years” ↗If you haven't already, it would be worth your time to read Player Piano by Vonnegut - the setting is very similar to what you describe above, and it's a pretty interesting take on those themes.
on “The Knives of Class Warfare Turn Towards Tech’s Plutocrats” ↗You should read Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano if you haven't already, I think it's relevant to your interests.
on “Humans vs. Machines: When to Hire and When to Automate” ↗…Sooner or later, we are going to have to make a fundamental change in how our society is structured, or things will get very unpleasant for a lot of folks. Out of curiosity, have you ever read Vonnegut's Player Piano? It touches on many of these topics, but in particular what you describe is also a key theme. There are few remaining jobs that people can do that machines can't (in the book, tend bar and give a haircut).…
on “I Delivered Packages for Amazon and It Was a Nightmare” ↗…and maybe that says that I'm a simpleton. One novel that I like better than Nineteen Eighty-Four, despite it being written in a mediocre way(I think I heard that Vonnegut gave his own work a B-), is Player Piano, which is about a dystopia where automation has made so many people obsolete that the only people who have jobs are a small number of engineers who maintain the machines; the middle class is basically…
on “'1984' at Seventy: Why We Still Read Orwell” ↗…editions and hadn't finished reading his later novels (a bunch of missing books, like someone left a box on a curb). Slaughterhouse-Five is a great read, and really gets to Vonnegut's style of writing. Player Piano is his earliest novel and reads very differently (a more conventional style), but the story and writing are fantastic. It's a world where machines can do most kinds of work, so the majority are unemployed…
on “Ask HN: Best non-business books to read on vacation” ↗I'm surprised no one has mentioned Player Piano by Vonnegut. It was one of his first novels and also one of his few science fiction novels. I still remember reading it in my teens. Great book and quite prescient.
on “Kurt Vonnegut at 100” ↗Growing up we learned about _Slaughterhouse 5_ and _Cat's Cradle_ by Kurt Vonnegut. But there's not enough discussion or awareness of _Player Piano_. Incredibly prescient. These kinds of dystopic headlines are exactly the kind of thing you'd see in the book.
on “Meta capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training data” ↗Anything by Vonnegut that you haven't read. Almost all of his books would be readable in a week or so. ("Player Piano" may be most appropriate to suggest given the nature of this site.)
on “Ask YC: Good books to take on a week away?” ↗For a great story exploring the ramifications of this, see: The Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut
on “The welfare state is today's equivalent of the gold standard” ↗