Tastes like honey to the child; like oil to the elderly.

September 11, 2008 6:21 AM

Depending on how you want to think about it, it was funny or inevitable or symbolic that the robotic takeover did not start at MIT, NASA, Microsoft or Ford. It started at a Burger-G restaurant in Cary, NC on May 17, 2010....

Manna, by Marshall Brain of pop-sci emporium HowStuffWorks.
posted by kid ichorous (56 comments total)

I was just smiling until I got to this:

"It doesn't matter if you are a hard worker or a slacker -- once you put on the headset, you are going to be working every minute of the day or you are gone. The system has already fired five people."

Even if nothing else in the story comes true, this alone warrants orbit-based nukeage. We have the technology to do basically this right now. Put RFID chips on someone and the system can see if they are at least going through the motions of doing work. Even some good video surveillance could do it. And just hook that computer to the one up in HR and no human ever needs to be involved in you getting fired for taking an extra 30 seconds in the bathroom.
posted by DU at 6:31 AM on September 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

DU: I figure they'll be able to get better results sooner with a cocktail of hypnotic drugs and "training videos". After that surveillance systems aren't necessary. Won't even have to fire anyone. Anyway, pretty good story so far.
posted by wobh at 6:52 AM on September 11, 2008

If companies start tracking detailed employee actions on a computer system and pushing them to grind through as many mind-numbing repetitive tasks as possible, they should probably take a page from MMORPGs and setup an XP system.

Employee of the month is nice and all, but wouldn't being a level 23 Dark Elf Burger-Wizard more exciting? They might even be able to stop paying minimum wage and start charging their employees a monthly fee.
posted by burnmp3s at 7:09 AM on September 11, 2008 [9 favorites]

You can practically hear the boners popping-up in boardrooms and HR departments across the country.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:19 AM on September 11, 2008

He's a depressingly bad writer, but the story is quite plausible.
posted by nasreddin at 7:21 AM on September 11, 2008

From Chapter 4:

"'We shouldn't design a society like that -- it's like the Nazi's designing the death camps.' I said. "

WHOA, MAN! NAZIS? YOU JUST BLEW MY MIND, DUUDE!
posted by nasreddin at 7:23 AM on September 11, 2008

It's like religion. "Free us from thought and responsibility." <)))
posted by Eideteker at 7:23 AM on September 11, 2008

Oh wait. Then it turns into OPEN SOURCE UTOPIA OMG LINUX FOR TEH WIN! Which is, um, less plausible.
posted by nasreddin at 7:26 AM on September 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Bad writer? I didn't think so... Granted, it's not Shakespeare, but for a cute little story, come on.
posted by banished at 7:28 AM on September 11, 2008

The worst part about the utopian section, which is so turgid and Cory-Doctorow-esque that it's almost unreadable, is that a) it relies on tacky, outworn, and unimaginative appeals to the power of technology to create a perfect society, as if we were in 1900 all over again, and b) for all that, it still makes it seem like a totalitarian hell of the socialist rather than the capitalist variety. Nothing is owned? Nothing is anonymous? Everyone knows everything about everyone else? "Better and better"? Um, OK.
posted by nasreddin at 7:36 AM on September 11, 2008 [2 favorites]

In related news . . .

I think I posted this in a previous life, but it's a great story that everyone should read. Correlates about 90% to my expectations of the future
posted by troy at 7:44 AM on September 11, 2008 [3 favorites]

Yeah, nas, I was going to post some sort of cautionary disclaimer re: flat prose and sharp left turns, but I didn't want to editorialize. However, I thought the unfolding of Manna scale by scale from micro-managerial to macro-economic was plausible and absolutely chilling.
posted by kid ichorous at 7:46 AM on September 11, 2008 [2 favorites]

In related news . . .

Holy shit. That is utterly terrifying, if unsurprising.

However, I thought the unfolding of Manna scale by scale from micro-managerial to macro-economic was plausible and absolutely chilling.

Absolutely. In fact, we have seen this before, when Fordist assembly-line and scientific-management principles were generalized throughout the government and corporate bureaucracy (at least it was supposed to work that way). Stories like the one troy posted suggest that our exuberance about the end of the Fordist era might have been irrational.
posted by nasreddin at 7:51 AM on September 11, 2008

Some of the "utopia" is chilling (no anonymity? Vertebrane overrides?) and some of it just contradictory, such as the whole "we can disconnect your muscles but it is impossible to create an army of zombies" bit. Okay, they wouldn't be zombies, they'd just be trapped inside of their bodies, helpless to do anything but watch while they were puppeteered about.

The dystopian is easier to pull off, of course; even Inferno is more interesting than Paradisio. It's a neat concept of the future, but as a story it clearly suffers from the failings of very old-school sci-fi, in which characters (especially outsiders) mostly existed to go "ooh, aaah!" and point in wonder at the fabulous new concepts introduced, with a nod to Heinlein in having the Sexually Available Character of Patient Exposition and Tediousness (SAC-PET) giving him the tour.

All of that aside, it's not just plausible but probable. The only way to keep profit margins expanding in the face of declining sales is to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Manna is an excellent way to wring every drop of efficiency out of the system.
posted by adipocere at 7:56 AM on September 11, 2008 [3 favorites]

It's not altogether implausible at first, but the idea that people wouldn't riot or resist is laughable. I also thought that the sharing of specific employee data was illegal in any case.

The story of the war against Manna and the upper classes who control it would be more interesting than this sort of super-dry spreadsheet approach to storytelling.

Someone like Philip K Dick or Paul Auster could have realised this vision with much more panache. It read like something an engineer would write.

However, I can see certain companies trying to adapt this model (especially call centres), Bob help us.
posted by chuckdarwin at 8:00 AM on September 11, 2008

with a nod to Heinlein in having the Sexually Available Character of Patient Exposition and Tediousness (SAC-PET) giving him the tour.

Also smacks of Piers Anthony.
posted by chuckdarwin at 8:02 AM on September 11, 2008 [2 favorites]

Okay, show of hands -- who else thought that it was going to have a "twist" ending where Vertebrane goes down system-wide and everyone finds out that the happy sunny verdant pasture utopia they've been living in was a simulation, and they're actually all in a total blasted wasteland like in The Matrix?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:03 AM on September 11, 2008 [2 favorites]

While I wouldn't mind living in the techno-utopia, I think it's profoundly unlikely...writers in this style always underestimate human resistance to the kind of interdependence needed to create such a society...even in a place like that, you'd need constant vigilance to prevent "griefers" from reprogramming the robots to make autonomous flying dildoes, or resetting your whuffie to zero, or whatever.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 8:05 AM on September 11, 2008

"How wide is this room?" I asked.

"16.5 of your shoes. Check it." She answered.

I checked it by pacing off the room. She was correct. "Lucky guess." I said.

"Next." She said.

"Will we ever make love together?" I asked.

"I cannot predict the future." She said. "But I would say that the probability of that event is high."

I looked at her and she looked at me for a moment.

And then I undid the top 3.5 buttons of her shirt. She raised her arms allowing me to slide her robot-manufactured garment over her head. Her breasts were each 46.7 centimeters in circumference, with areolas that were 3 centimeters in diameter.

Suddenly, an autonomous flying dildo flew into the room autonomously!
posted by sixswitch at 8:32 AM on September 11, 2008 [9 favorites]

It's the lefty version of Atlas Shrugged.
posted by overhauser at 8:34 AM on September 11, 2008 [3 favorites]

A decent read. I'm not seeing any way of knowing up front how long it is though, so to anyone wondering:

The story is 8 pages long.
posted by rlk at 8:39 AM on September 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

"Okay, show of hands -- who else thought that it was going to have a "twist" ending where Vertebrane goes down system-wide and everyone finds out that the happy sunny verdant pasture utopia they've been living in was a simulation, and they're actually all in a total blasted wasteland like in The Matrix?"

Half way through I was thinking that the whole Australia Project would turn out to be the successor to Terrafoam, keeping people alive even more cheaply in virtual reality.
posted by malevolent at 8:41 AM on September 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Wow... what a deeply unsatisfying story. Mr. Brain (heh) has basically crafted a Mary Sue universe. And after starting with such a creepily plausible dystopian premise! It's a waste. I mean, he was off to such a good start, with the formerly prosperous suburbanites musing on the tragedy of their situation and how their experiences mesh with the tragedies they ignored growing up. And then, dropping out of nowhere, the deus ex Australis!

"You just put this chip in your spine like so. It's completely painless and free, and is the greatest thing ever. Your dreams will come true in high-definition awesome, you can exercise without feeling the burn, and you can even make your teeth sparkle with an audible *ding* on demand. You get free money all the time and can do whatever you want because everything comes from the sun -- which you can visit, by the way. Our fantabulous star elevator reaches right into its depths without burning, because it's made of incredibly futuristic materials that are pollution-free and edible and smell like freshly-squeezed limeade. Did I mention that you can make a limeade appear on demand? Or lemonade, if you prefer. Anything is possible in this wonderful consequence-free utopia. Also, I would like to sex you up at your earliest opportunity. The robots can help, if you'd like. They're programmer that way. All open-source, of course.
posted by Rhaomi at 8:43 AM on September 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm surprised there isn't more about advertising in the human-computer interfaces. They'ed have been bought out early on, and so the 'G' in Burger-G becomes Google. Would add even more uncanniness to the whole thing.

Intriguing story, great post.
posted by buzzv at 9:37 AM on September 11, 2008

Robotic management is not so far off from what's at Domino's right now.

Orders are entered into the storewide computer system, and pop up on a screen at the makeline. The people on the makeline call out the time on the order and inform the system when the pizza goes into the oven. When the pizza comes out of the oven, you'd better box it up and dispatch it to a driver quick, because the system tracks how many orders are dispatched in under 15 minutes (the target time). Each day, rankings are compiled for all the stores in the region, and the computer screens are always informing you how your store is ranking that day for promptness. Info on each order is available online to the person who ordered it, so they can see when it's in the oven, when it hits the road, and what their driver's name is. They can also leave an impersonal anonymous 1-5 star rating of the driver, which shows on the monitors in the store.

The system pits managers against each other in competition to get the lowest labor costs. It pits everyone who answers the phone against each other in competition to upsell the current promotion. The whole place is robotized, and it knows when you clock in and out. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some "fire" condition that brings an employee's punctuality or sales performance to the manager's attention.

Manna is not so far away.
posted by lostburner at 9:55 AM on September 11, 2008

Great story. Thanks!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 10:46 AM on September 11, 2008

I enjoyed this, but our man needs to learn how to craft an ending. This one boiled down to, "And then everyone lived happily in Heaven forever, drinking beer that both tastes great and is less filling."

For my money, I thought the recruiters from Australia were lulling him into some version of a death chamber -- sort of like the cloned clone-killers in the radio version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" who go around romancing overproduced clones in order to trick them into signing a self-immolation contract.

Um...lots of exposition there. It reads like a back-story to a more exciting adventure.
posted by CheeseburgerBrown at 10:59 AM on September 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

this alone warrants orbit-based nukeage

I've been saying we should should nuke Cary for years. Finally someone listens.
posted by Rangeboy at 11:01 AM on September 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

EmpressCallipygos, I am holding up my hand, yes.

I was struck by one sentence in the article troy links to: "Computers aren't very forgiving when it comes to an individual's life."

This encapsulates the problem in a nutshell, doesn't it? Computers do what computers are programmed to do. If there is a lack of forgiveness, nobody blames the pencil management used to write your pink slip -- but if the computer makes a decision, nobody even considers blaming management.

Weird.
posted by Michael Roberts at 11:13 AM on September 11, 2008

The way Linda used too few contractions in her speech had me thinking she was under robotic control for a while, but then I realized that was just the author's style. I could barely believe that there wasn't a dark twist after all the little hints that seemed to be there. Perhaps this story is used in the terrafoams by the Project as a recruitment tool.
posted by topynate at 11:32 AM on September 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

I read this before, and thought it was good until I got to the wishful thinking Utopian society part.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 11:34 AM on September 11, 2008 [2 favorites]

I liked the story, and I, too was cynically thinking that there was a twist. I thought he had already been implanted, though, and that everything he was seeing post-airplane-ride was VR.

And, while I have to say thank you to kid ichorous for posting it, it would have been more fulfilling if it had been posted by a robot made out of meat.
posted by tomierna at 11:38 AM on September 11, 2008

In unrealted news, manna manna.
posted by Vindaloo at 11:51 AM on September 11, 2008

unrelated*
posted by Vindaloo at 11:51 AM on September 11, 2008

Mr. Brain is also responsible for The Teenager's Guide to the Real World:

Why is it that good triumphs over evil? Why is it that this is such a consistent fact of life? Why is it that you can reliably predict the future of a person's life based on his goodness or evilness? First, most people are fundamentally good and they do not tolerate bad. Society as a whole has an interest in promoting goodness, so it does. When someone lies to you, for example, you find you cannot trust that person. Therefore, you stop doing business with that person. So do other people. The lying person goes out of business or loses his job. The second reason is that bad acts often have bad consequences associated with them. That is simply how the world works. You might do something bad once and get away with it. Maybe twice. Maybe many times. But in general the natural consequences of bad acts catch up with you and you reap what you sow.

The rest of it is equally worth your time. I honestly still cannot figure out whether this is a put-on, but then there are days when I feel that way about most of the internet.
posted by brennen at 11:59 AM on September 11, 2008

I was entertained by the story. There are obvious holes in the plot, but when you're taking a novel length idea and smooshing it down to eight pages.. things are going to get lost. Was definately worth the 20 minutes I spent reading it.

However, the biggest hole I see in the story is the removal of wage-earners from the economy. If you're taking jobs away from enough people, you no longer have a source of income. The fast food restuarant would be a great example - as you start to eliminate low wage jobs, your largest customer base - the low wage earners - no longer have the income to spend at your business, and at a certain point there is no more money flowing in due to no consumers. So capitalism requires an unequal balance of wealth, otherwise it collapses.
posted by waxlight at 12:07 PM on September 11, 2008

I read this a while ago. The first half seemed interesting enough, but the second that the Australia Project turned up it felt like I was being preached to; the tone turned from Dystopia Fiction to Weird Inverted Jack Chick Tract. I dislike being preached at, no matter who's doing it.
posted by lekvar at 12:23 PM on September 11, 2008

In the dystopian society crafted in the first part of the story, why would you bother keeping the welfare people alive at all? I've heard it explained that the Nazi's simply couldn't kill people fast enough, hence the death camps (not sure I buy this, plus there is the slave labor aspect as well), but in a society where the lowest rungs of the ladder have been effectively removed from the system, wouldn't a "rational" system do the math and realize that cremating a hundred million people is cheaper than housing them for decades?
posted by maxwelton at 1:46 PM on September 11, 2008

waxlight: you just have to look at the current corporations. None of them care about anything beyond the next quarter. If any company could fire 99.99% of its workers and still keep producing the same stuff, they would have an obligation to the shareholders to do that.
posted by Iax at 3:12 PM on September 11, 2008

Put RFID chips on someone and the system can see if they are at least going through the motions of doing work.

Or you could monitor my activity on a computer to see how much time is spent being productive, and how much time is spent looking at MetaFilter.

I have it lucky, as I'm in a sales development and client management role, so I'm expected to be out at my desk. Still, developers are measured by how much quality code they can crank out, and the team lead or supervisor knows how productive they are, anyway.

If you work at a call centre, productively is actively monitored and evaluated, but who wants to work at a call centre?

This sort of technology only really works for a large corporation like Walmart, where it is easy to goof off. However, Walmart is already a shitty place to work - how could RFID make it any worse?

I just don't see the sense of deploying this sort of technology, because it won't help the bottom line. And that's all that really counts, right?
posted by KokuRyu at 3:18 PM on September 11, 2008

I've worked in Cary, and can say that this could totally happen there.

Nuke away, indeed.
posted by malaprohibita at 3:30 PM on September 11, 2008

Ahh, the free market. Don't it just make you want to piss all over everything?
posted by turgid dahlia at 3:36 PM on September 11, 2008

why would you bother keeping the welfare people alive at all?

actually shooting them would violate their human rights in the property of their person, as any good Libertarian would tell you.
posted by troy at 4:11 PM on September 11, 2008

I live in Cary, so.....just let me know before somebody has set up us the bomb. And shoot, this story won't take place til 2010 so I'll totally be on the look out for this place and shut it down via sanitation score or something.

we're not that bad folks!
posted by kurmbox at 5:28 PM on September 11, 2008

If you're taking jobs away from enough people, you no longer have a source of income. The fast food restuarant would be a great example - as you start to eliminate low wage jobs, your largest customer base - the low wage earners - no longer have the income to spend at your business, and at a certain point there is no more money flowing in due to no consumers. So capitalism requires an unequal balance of wealth, otherwise it collapses.

The first part of your argument is correct. If you fire the very people consuming your product, you will fail.
However, your conclusion that capitalism requires an inequality of wealth does not follow. The survival of a fast food chain does not hinge on their being low wage earners at all. It simply depends on their simply being wage earners. Low wages are not a requirement. The system would survive perfectly well, even flourish, if wealth disparity was non-existent.

Of course, this would require companies to put the quality of their product or service foremost as the cornerstone of building economic health, rather than this week's closing stock price.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:29 PM on September 11, 2008

And this, kids, is why I don't use self-checkout at the grocery. The robots are takin' the jobs that rightfully belong to the Cylons!
posted by bonobo at 7:41 PM on September 11, 2008

Good story, especially the first half. The second half turns into a sort of upside down Atlas Shrugged, which is a bit saccharine.

(And adipocere, I totally got the same Heinlein vibe with the tour guide chick. I could not stop visualizig her in a jumpsuit.)
posted by rokusan at 8:14 PM on September 11, 2008

It's not altogether implausible at first, but the idea that people wouldn't riot or resist is laughable.

Dude. What country have you been living in the last 10 years?

Nothing will cause riots in the USA ever again.
posted by rokusan at 8:18 PM on September 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Dude. What country have you been living in the last 10 years?

Britain, for three years and change. Before that? Some shithole on the East Coast that no one ever heard of.

Nothing will cause riots in the USA ever again.

Not even a Hurricane?
posted by chuckdarwin at 2:51 AM on September 12, 2008

Either be controlled by AI or fuse with it. These are your options.

It's only scary if we make some delineation between "computer" and any other artifact - car, tool, building, city, society. All are extensions of the individual diffusing with the universe. Blah.
posted by iamck at 5:48 AM on September 12, 2008

Dude. What country have you been living in the last 10 years?
Britain, for three years and change.

Do you have a spare room? I'm inconspicuous.
posted by rokusan at 10:44 AM on September 12, 2008

rokusan, you're welcome any time. Unfortunately, you've hit upon Britain's biggest problem: housing.
posted by chuckdarwin at 4:32 PM on September 12, 2008

I love this story, and I was sure it had been posted to Mefi before, but more attention = good.
posted by IndigoRain at 4:57 PM on September 14, 2008

It's been bugging me for days: As far as I understand, you cannot build a space elevator in Australia, no matter what.
posted by maxwelton at 10:18 PM on September 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

maxwelton: "It's been bugging me for days: As far as I understand, you cannot build a space elevator in Australia, no matter what."

Not necessarily. A similar structure called a space fountain could theoretically be built at any location, although it would require a constant input of active power to remain standing.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:29 AM on September 15, 2008

Also, the Australia Project could, if enough people were down for it, build a space elevator somewhere else by buying the land with the appropriate goods or services from the Project itself.
posted by Xoder at 8:07 PM on September 15, 2008