Category Archives: Books

Machine Man by Max Barry

Max Barry is a master at seeing our world and distorting it to extremes in order to reflect it back to us in all of its absurdities. His previous novels, Syrup, Jennifer Government, and Company each looked at the disfunction implicit in how our society functions and, in doing so, gives us a new perspective in where we might be heading.

Machine Man is no different. When an engineer, Charles Neumann, loses his leg in an accident at work, the way he responds is very different than how most of us might in his situation. Being an engineer, he begins to improve on the prosthetics he is issued at the hospital. However, once he realizes that the new leg he has built is better — faster, stronger, and smarter — than the leg he used to have, he embarks on a journey of self-improvement the likes of which the world has never seen.

Of course, Charles is simply taking being an engineer to a completely new level, reengineering his own body. However, at some point, his bosses take notice and see other uses for what Charles is doing. What happens when Charles’ inventions are viewed not only as improvements on prosthetics but also as products to be sold, including to the military? And where does Charles’ self-improvement end? These are the basis of a plot that does more than just take us on a wild roller coaster ride, but also tries to shed light on the question of what it means to be human.

In an age in which one form of self-improvement — doping — is ubiquitous in professional sports, one can ask what happens when trying to improve on human biology is taken to the extreme. Barry offers us one glimpse of what might be. It’s a vision both thrilling and a bit disconcerting.

Stories by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio

A book of good short stories is sort of like wandering the Parte Vieja of Donosti in the Basque Country and sampling pintxos from the different bars. Each one is completely different than the one before, but just as unique and exceptional. I just finished reading probably what is now my favorite collection of short stories, entitled, aptly enough, Stories. The editors, Neil Gaiman (of varied fame) and Al Sarrantonio, have pulled together an impressive group of writers to contribute to this collection. Some of the bigger names include Jodi Picoult, Chuck Palahniuk (who wrote The Fight Club), and Joyce Carol Oates.

Many of these stories have a fantasy or supernatural bent to them, but some of them are simply of ordinary people in quite unordinary situations. Some of them are simply odd, and others are quite dark. One, for example, is the story of a serial killer, from the point of view of the killer himself. Others are stories of revenge or simply stories of life. While some made bigger impressions on me than others, none of them disappointed.

I won’t go into any detail about any of the stories, as I’d prefer to let anyone who might be so inclined to discover this great collection for themselves. I will say that, while I tend to enjoy fantasy, it was the other stories that resonated more strongly for me. And the darker ones were, indeed, a bit disturbing. All, however, are highly recommended.

Bursts by Albert László Barabási

Sometimes (more often than not), I wait too long to get to writing about books I’ve read.  I read Bursts by Albert László Barabási a few months ago, and having a memory like a sieve, I’ve already forgotten a lot of details. But, the basic idea is this: humans are more predictable in our behavior than we would ever expect.

A truly random behavior is often characterized by Brownian motion, named after the guy who discovered it, a guy named Brown, of course.  It was Einstein who understood it and it has become a mainstay of our understanding of how random processes occur, such as the motion of atoms in solids and molecules in liquids.

If humans acted in a Brownian way, we could predict certain aspects of human behavior, such as the average time to move from one place to another, but not much more. It turns out that humans and our associated activities are not so Brownian — not so random — and we are more predictable than that. Our behavior follows “bursts”, in which our patterns are punctuated by long periods of relatively quiet activity followed by bursts of focused activity.  These bursts are indicators of non-random behavior.

As an example, we don’t check our email at random intervals throughout the day. There are times in which we don’t check or answer email for a while, then sudden bursts where we fire off a number of emails in very fast succession.  The same is pretty much true of everything we do, whether we are aware of it or not. This makes us much more predictable than we would think.

In fact, Barabási says that if you give him details of your activity for about 2 months or so, he can predict with better than 80% accuracy what you will do in your day.

Barabási spends a lot of time discussing the implications of this fact, from identifying terrorists (from abnormal behavior) or the fact that advertisers know better than us what we will be doing, and target us very effectively.

Interspersed with his discussion of randomness is a tale from Hungarian history, the story of György Dózsa, a nobel who first was given command of a Crusade against the Ottomans which became a peasant revolt against the nobility of Hungary. I won’t spoil the end, but it is gruesome. Barabási weaves this story throughout his narrative as an attempt to show both how predictable and unpredictable history is. I’m not sure it works nor adds to the basic point of his book, but it is an interesting historical anecdote. I did learn something about a little known aspect of European history. If this guy had been successful in his revolt, Europe might have turned out very different.

In the end, this book gives some very interesting insight into human behavior and points to the danger that companies and governments will know us better than we know ourselves. I already am wary of advertisers as they know our mental propensities better than us, knowing how to appeal to those parts of us that we barely are aware of. With the insight from work such as Barabási’s, they will also know our behavior, our activities and be able to predict what we are going to do. This kind of research offers fascinating new insight into what it means to be human, but also opens the door to more control of our lives.

Company by Max Barry

Jones is a new hire at Zephyr Holdings, a company in Seattle.  His very first task upon arriving at the office is to find out who ate his boss’s donut.  From there, Jones begins a quest to find out exactly what it is this company he works for does. I mean, what is their business.  The answer is both surprising and a bit unsettling.

Company is the third book I’ve read by Max Barry (Jennifer Government and Syrup being the other two). Company follows right on the heels of the others, exploring the relationship between the corporate world and everyday life.  In Company, Barry focuses on the employees, the worker-bees in any corporation, and their role in the company’s successes and failures.  In particular, he examines how the different aspects of the company — marketing, IT, procurement, etc — work together — or don’t — for the betterment of the company.  But, he also explores how corporate culture demands personal sacrifice from the employees in order to maximize corporate success.

Barry explores corporate culture by taking it to absurd extremes — or, at least, I hope he does.  I can’t imagine working in an environment that he describes.  At the same time, while reading Company, I couldn’t help but think that “that’s a lot like where I work.” For example, regarding the different organizations in the company and their relationships to one another, I’ve often thought that there must be someone where I work who’s sole job is to make up new forms, just so I have new ones to fill out.  Not because it leads to more productivity, or makes it easier to do my job, but just because.  Just because someone has a job to make forms.

By lampooning corporate culture, Barry exposes some of the trends that are really disturbing once you think about them.  I won’t go into details because I think it would spoil the plot, but suffice it to say that by painting corporate life in an absurd extreme, Barry offers insight into just how corporate culture is affecting us, both as individuals and as a society.

I really enjoyed the novel and highly recommend it, both for its entertainment value and its perspective on our market-driven society. I’d really like to hear what people who are in large, multinational corporations think about this book.  Barry himself used to work at HP. Any HPeons out there willing to give their thoughts?