Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano is an insightful satire concerning the direction of American industry in the 1950s. Taking place in the future, the novel portrays a world where "efficient" machines have taken the place of the factory worker and are now in charge of the nation's production. In this futuristic vision of America, a new elite class, that of the engineer and the manager, has arisen and it is they who run and maintain the self-regulating factories and dominate the country economically. Since waste and starvation have been eliminated, the nation, at least on the surface, seems to be a better place. But has the life of the common citizen, a life without human contact, chance of improvement or purpose, really changed for the better? It is obvious that Vonnegut, with his deeply satirical words, attempts to stimulate the reader into asking himself this question and many more. Questioning the technology movement of his time, Vonnegut asks society to evaluate the costs of over-mechanization. .
One of the aspects of this book that mirrors real life American history is the notion of scientists taking the most skilled worker and evaluation his methods and motions in order to determine the standard for efficient work. In the novel, Dr. Paul Proteus recollects how he and the other engineers had taken a master machinist by the name of Rudy Hertz and had "immortalized" his techniques of machine work on magnetic tape that now runs many machines in the Ilium Works. This story seems all to familiar to the real life techniques of "Scientific Management" where a fair day's work was determined through evaluation of the most efficient factory worker.
Later on in the novel, Paul encounters Hertz who must surely had benefited from being the brains behind the machines. But, in reality, Hertz is found run down and out of work, replaced by the machines he helped create. This is just one instance where Vonnegut points out that anyone can be the victim of the machine.
