| Notes |
machine"The result [in Vonnegut's book Player Piano] is a technocratic despotism wholly controlled by information technicians and corporate managers. The book raises the issue whether technology should be allowed to do all that it can do, especially when its powers extend to the crafts and skills which give purpose to people's lives. The machines are slaves, Vonnegut's rebellious engineer-hero insists. True, they make life easier in many ways; but they also compete with people. And 'anybody that competes with slaves becomes a slave.' As Vonnegut observes, 'Norbert Weiner, a mathematician, said all that way back in the nineteen-forties.'" (p. 11)
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