How about this for a timely combination:
1. HBO's Westworld
2. Purdue's Dawn or Doom Presentations:
Past: November 5 - 6, 2018
Future: September 24 - 25, 2019
3. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s first novel (1952): Player Piano
Does Vonnegut predict the future in this dystopian
study of automation? Indeed he does!
So Many Doom - Filled Passages:
6: "It was a vote of confidence from the past, he thought -- where the past admitted how humble and shoddy it had been, where one could look from the old to the new and see that mankind really had come a long way. Paul needed that reassurance from time to time."
12: "Paul . . . suddenly realized that most of the machinery would be old stuff, even to Edison. The braiders, the welders, the punch presses, the lathes, the conveyers -- everything in sight, almost, had been around in Edison's time. The basic parts of the automatic controls, too, and the electric eyes and other elements that did and did better what human senses had once done for industry -- all were familiar enough in scientific circles even in the nineteen - twenties. All that was new was the combination of these elements."
14 - 15: " . . . the First Industrial Revolution devalued muscle work, then the second one devalued routine mental work. . . . Do you suppose there'll be a Third Industrial Revolution?"
"A third one? What would that be like?"
"I don't know exactly. The first and second ones must have been sort of inconceivable at one time."
" . . . I guess the third one's been going on for some time, if you mean thinking machines. That would be the third revolution, I guess -- machines that devaluate human thinking. Some big computers like EPICAC do that all right, in specialized fields."
280 - 81: "What have you got against machines? said Buck.
They're slaves.
Well, what the heck, said Buck. I mean, they aren't people. They don't suffer. They don't mind working.
No. But they compete with people.
That's a pretty good thing, isn't it -- considering what a sloppy job most people do of anything?
Anybody that competes with slaves becomes a slave, said Harrison thickly, and he left."
301: " . . . the divine right of machines . . .
During the past three wars, the right of technology to increase in power and scope was unquestionably, in point of national survival, almost a divine right. Americans owe their lives to superior machines, techniques, organization, and managers and engineers. For these means of surviving the wars . . . I thank God. But we cannot win good lives for ourselves in peacetime by the same methods we used to win battles in wartime. The problems of peace are altogether more subtle.
I deny that there is any natural or divine law requiring that machines, efficiency, and organization should forever increase in scope, power, and complexity, in peace as in war. I see the growth of these now, rather, as the result of a dangerous lack of law.
The time has come to stop the lawlessness in that part of our culture which is your special responsibility.
Without regard for the wishes of men, any machines or techniques or forms of organization that can economically replace men do replace men. Replacement is not necessarily bad, but to do it without regard for the wishes of men is lawlessness."
314: "'The sovereignty of the United States resides in the people, not in the machines, and it's the people's to take back, if they so wish. The machines,' said Paul, 'have exceeded the personal sovereignty willingly surrendered to them by the American people for the good government. Machines and organization and pursuit of efficiency have robbed the American people of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'”
"If there's the slightest connection,
it's worth thinking about."
~ from Player Piano, 54
Additional Blog Posts:
O Ya - Ya of Little Faith
A Title Like a Book
Whatnots
Dawn to Doom
How Do You Say Home
Take This Quiz
Comic Strip
Final Exam
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