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 …showed first 75 words of 1527 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1527 total…career-enemy. All his life is beaten, he has nothing, and his university degree is taken from him so that now he has no qualification. The government leads a trial against him that is broadcast by the television, and they turn all the facts upside down and inside out so that Paul looks like the worst and meanest. So that any revolution looks like a complete nonsense, and so that the present system is the best.