Recent trends, ideas and technologies have contributed to increased mechanization of society. We have ATMs to replace bank tellers, robots perform assembly line jobs at virtually every automobile company, and computers are increasingly integrated into our daily lives. People are slowly, but surely, being replaced by my machines and artificial “workers.” Kurt Vonnegut foresaw this mechanization movement in the 1950s and responded to the dehumanization of society in his novel Player Piano. In Vonnegut's fictional world, machines and computers eliminated the need for industrial labor after the Second Industrial Revolution. Society is thus divided into two unequal classes: the directors and engineers of the machines, who enjoy exclusive social status and privileges, and the rest of the population who live without happiness or dignity. The two populations live in segregation, with the north bank of the river being reserved for the upper class and the south bank of the river, known as Homestead, housing everything else. Although everything...