In Player Piano, everything is controlled by machines and computers and depends on productivity. The managers and engineers only create new programs for more productive production. Even the rates of production and consumption are calculated by a computer (EPICAC), which is seated in the large Carlsbad cavern system. The EPICAC computer even determines the people's careers and in this way their whole lives. It gives intelligence tests to everyone, and on the basis of their results it sorts people into two categories - suitable for university entering exams and suitable for 'work'. The university studies allow their graduates to become managers, engineers, writers or public relation workers. You may become a writer only if you get a university degree, the literature is heavily censored and you may write only "suitable" facts and create stories about authorized settings. Ordinary people were degraded into a role of passive consumers. They do not have to work anymore; the only really working jobs are either supervisors in industry or agriculture, or reconstruction and restoration groups, or soldiers. But supervisors do not have any work; reconstruction and restoration workers are too numerous to work really; and soldiers are bullied cruelly. The majority of population is bored since they have everything they need, all their homework is done by automatons and machines, and their only job is entertainment.Dr Paul Proteus lives in the city of Ilium, N.Y. The city is divided into three major parts: the managers and engineers are in the northwest, in the northeast there is a large industrial plant, quite a large city by itself, and in the south across the river there is the town for ordinary people, who are the rough majority. He is employed in the Illium Industrial Plant as a general manager. His only work is to rule the factory so that its productivity still increases and so that there are no saboteurs. Computers control all the other. He is...
