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
- The Dispossessed · Book, 1974
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- Wool · Book, 2011
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