All Day

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BK · Book · 1924 · novel

We

Yevgeny Zamyatin

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The machines

The Table of Hours, and a mathematics of society treated as engineering.

What people do all day

Every hour is scheduled: when to wake, work, walk in ranks, chew each mouthful. Two Personal Hours a day are the only unallocated time anyone has, and the state considers even those a regrettable concession.

Pattern

Allocated labour — A system decides what you will do, and people comply — sometimes willingly.

Note

The earliest work in the catalogue and the direct ancestor of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World. Its subject is not surveillance but scheduling.


Same answer, different work