Author: Marc-Uwe Kling
Date read: 2022-09-03
QualityLand is the story of a country where AI and machines are ubiquitous and do everything for the humans. They decide for you, they send automatic tailored packets with drones, they find partner for you, take you from a place to another, they can be your friend, or even they can be the president. The system collects information of all the people, and provides various services according to the "interest" of the people. But what if the system is wrong about a person?
Peter Jobless (surname of all the characters in the story is the father's occupation at the birth moment), is the person who believes something is wrong. One day a drone from TheShop "The world's most popular online retailer" delivers a packet to him, in which he finds a pink dolphin vibrator. Since he believes the vibrator doesn't have any use case for him, he tires to send it back to TheShop, but all of his attempts fail and the only response that he gets is "the system doesn't make any mistake".
Peter believes the system puts the people in their own bubble and gives the illusion that everyone is like them, the religious with religious, workaholic with workaholic, and racist with racist. So a person's opinions never come to question, and on the contrary is always reconfirmed by the system. At the end he suggests that people should be able to see their "profile" (which is the data that the system has collected from them), correct it, and delete it. All and all, he calls for transparency of the system.
I think the QualityLand that Marc-Uwe-Kling portrays is to some extent already a reality in some countries. For instance in China people have social score (the same as level in QualityLand) and people with a higher rating have special privileges. In general the book calls for thinking about how the humans should control the machines and not the other way around.
Rating: 4/5