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To: SeekAndFind
In a 1973 interview, Vonnegut discussed his inspiration to write the book Player Piano:
I was working for General Electric at the time, right after World War II, and I saw a milling machine for cutting the rotors on jet engines, gas turbines. This was a very expensive thing for a machinist to do, to cut what is essentially one of those Brâncuși forms. So they had a computer-operated milling machine built to cut the blades, and I was fascinated by that. This was in 1949 and the guys who were working on it were foreseeing all sorts of machines being run by little boxes and punched cards. Player Piano was my response to the implications of having everything run by little boxes. The idea of doing that, you know, made sense, perfect sense. To have a little clicking box make all the decisions wasn't a vicious thing to do. But it was too bad for the human beings who got their dignity from their jobs.
Regards,
6 posted on 05/22/2026 2:49:49 AM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: alexander_busek

...But it was too bad for the human beings who got their dignity from their jobs....

That is part of the equation
What will be the future nature of work, so that a human can eat, build shelter, raise a family, and create an identity for himself.


9 posted on 05/22/2026 5:06:17 AM PDT by Steven Tyler
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