Player Piano

What do you do when you are stuck in a meaningless job and a meaningless existence in Technopoly? Like Paul Proteus, manager of the Ilium Works, you get first get the proper perspective (from Player Piano):

Farming--now there was a magic word. Like so many words with little magic from the past still clinging to them, the word "farming" was a reminder of what rugged stock the present generation had come from, of how tough a thing a human being could be if it had to. The word had little meaning in the present. There were no longer farmers, but only agricultural engineers. In the rich Iroquois Valley in Ilium County, thousands of settlers had once made their living from the soil. Now Doctor Ormand van Curler managed the farming of the whole county with a hundred men and several million dollars' worth of machinery.

Then you have to accept the reality that everyone already knows--the value of those titles bookending the business cards of Dr. Paul Proteus, Ph.D., and all his peers:

"Well, I'll be going back to work. Long as this here is going to be your farm, you might's well fix the pump. Needs a new packing."

"Afraid I don't know how," said Paul.

"Maybe," said Mr. Haycox walking away, "maybe if you'd gone to college another ten or twenty years, somebody would of gotten around to showing you how, Doctor."

That, of course, is the sentiment of the farmhand. Not so surprising, the sentiment is shared by Doctor Francis Eldgrin Gelhorne, National Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Director (Gelhorne lecturing Proteus):

"Nobody's so damn well educated that you can't learn ninety per cent of what he knows in six weeks. The other ten per cent is decoration."

"Yes, sir."

"Show me a specialist, and I'll show you a man who's so scared he's dug a hole for himself to hide in."

The government of Technopoly would be wise to enact antisabotage laws similar to those governing Ilium, strictly forbidding the publication of any books with an antimachine theme; reading this one makes me want to become a farmer even more.