Cybernetics in Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano

Abstract

In Player Piano (1952), Kurt Vonnegut depicts individuals who fall prey to a dominating cybernetics system that amplifies its influence through computers, consumer culture, and the advertising sector in post-war America. The article explores the concept of cybernetics in Player Piano, which reduces people to sentient machines and mindless bodies. Player Piano is an attempt to use machine analogies to make sense of complex systems. It is difficult to depict a cosmos that is predetermined and gives humans no free will.