QualityLand

This book has a dark, insightful sense of humor and I'm here for it! QualityLand highlights how aspects of our online lives drive our offline lines even when we don't realize it. Algorithms and ads unknowingly shape wants and desires in a way that can change personalities and real life relationships. Sound familiar?

"Machine Breakers" are QualityLand's anti-Utopia crowd who reject Universal Basic Income and investing in everyone's intellectual and physical health. Machine Breakers live in their own echo chamber and anything outside of that is suspect, discouraged, and violently destroyed.

Can algorithms be wrong? Yes. Can we easily update what those algorithms are based on? Not necessarily and that's where Peter Jobless' Sisyphean quest begins. In QualityLand vestigial, irrelevant data from years ago ends up throwing a wrench (in the form of a a little pink dolphin vibrator) in Peter's current life in the funniest and saddest ways.

Without saying much more, if you love movies like Minority Report, Idiocracy, and Don't Look Up, then QualityLand is for you.

Geen idee hoe deze op mijn lijstje terecht gekomen was, want die kennis zou nuttig zijn om de bron in de toekomst met iets meer zout te beschouwen. Geen idee ook hoe het boek een gemiddelde 4.2* heeft gekregen. Toen het uit was bleek achterin ook nog te staan dat het verfilmd gaat worden...

Het idee is best aardig, een satire op internet, AI, politiek, de maatschappij, maar de uitwerking vond ik nogal matig. Misschien komt het door de vertaling uit het Duits, maar er zitten ook veels te veel grappen in die na 1x al bijna een baard hebben, en meerdere keren terug komen (zoals dat zo'n beetje alle getallen die in het boek voorkomen, aantallen, afstanden, etc) allemaal machten van twee zijn. Daarnaast schiet het boek nogal eens in de “uitleg” modus om IT en andere begrippen uit te leggen, en dat past ook niet lekker in het verhaal...

A great book that will likely appeal to fans of Rob Ware and Cory Doctorow. Chilling and funny, an examination of how human innovation may imperil humanity. The story of a world dominated by monopolies, algorithms, and consumption. Add in social credit and AI, and you've got the real world...erm, Qualityland. Following a machine scrapper, a presidential candidate, and others, Qualityland tells a tale of conflict between individuals and systems, as one man seeks to overcome the identity imposed upon him by corporate systems. A satirical look at the influences big tech and e-commerce have on the world today. At times Qualityland prioritizes its ideas over the plot, but it is nevertheless potent and amusing.

THIS BOOK IS WONDERFUL. I am not into political commentary in most cases, but this was so over-the-top yet realistic that it hit perfectly. I loved all of the references and puns.

THIS BOOK IS WONDERFUL. I am not into political commentary in most cases, but this was so over-the-top yet realistic that it hit perfectly. I loved all of the references and puns.

Funny, but a bit too on the nose. The social commentary is timely but isn't anything that hasn't been said before (and usually better).

Aunque coincido con lo la opinion de que es un libro divertido, para mi desmerece un poco la idea que quiere transmitir con algunas de esas bromas.

1.5/5I wanted to read this one because the story was similar to [b:The Circle 18302455 The Circle Dave Eggers https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1376419833l/18302455.SX50.jpg 25791820] and I really enjoyed that one.We have a dystopian country QualityLand where everything is AMAZING and PERFECT. Where the ALGORITHM is the new ‘Big Brother'. TheShop is the new Amazon that just KNOWS what you need. It's a scary vision of what can come if we just let the algorithm do all the work.We follow Peter whose surname is Jobless because his father was jobless when he was born. It's just a welcome thing. The more you read the more sick things like this you can find. There are so many things that CAN happen in the world if we let big companies take care of everything. We won't need to go to the shop, we won't need to go for a date, because the algorithm will find the perfect match.“To us, every complex algorithm is a black box. That means we see the input and output, but we have no idea what's happening inside the black box and why.”But the algorithm is not infallible.

What a quality read! The description of it being Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy meets 1984 is very apt. The futuristic Big Brother type world is littered with humorous possibilities. Both thought provoking and extremely funny. A great read, highly recommended. Loved the variation on a pre-nup!

Almost felt like a Mike Judge follow up to ‘Idiocracy' (but in a good way!)
See my full review here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHWELYzuJmI

Probably a 3.5.

This satire on capitalism, tech companies and the way our lives are so dependent on algorithms set in a future where all of these things have been taken to an extreme is quite hilarious. The way language is used, or how we live in our own confirmation bias bubbles or even electoral politics - the author makes a lot of fun about all of them but we can also clearly see the parallels to our current reality and that uncanniness was a bit scary too. It's also very easy to read despite being a translation.

However, there are many conversations in the story that felt like info dumps which kinda bored me. And despite this being a story about an ordinary inconsequential man taking on a mega corporation, I couldn't see where it was going. And that ending kinda stumped me - I'm not sure if I'm dissatisfied because I shouldn't have expected anything else or maybe I just wanted it to be different from real life.

Overall, I can say that pick this book up if you want something entertaining but don't expect it to be very profound or radical in any way.

Like black mirror mixed with brave new world. It tries to be fun and sometimes it succeeds but mostly just makes you feel sad.

It accurately captures the feeling of where things are headed. As an engineer who works on these sorts of things, I can tell you we aren't headed there any time soon. But it certainly does feel like we most days.

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
—
When you boil it down, QualityLand is simply the epic tale of a man trying to return something he didn't order (and doesn't want) to an online retailer. Peter Jobless's tale involves a paranoid hacker, a blackmail scheme, an armed stand-off, a smitten sex-bot, a TV news panel show, a revolutionary tablet computer, swaying a presidential election, and a revival of interest in the films of Jennifer Aniston. We've all been there, right?

There's no way I could describe the plot in a way to do it justice—so we'll stick with the broad sweep. Before much gets underway story-wise, there's a lot of set up required. When the dominoes start to fall in earnest, they go quickly. But so much of the book is devoted to setting them up, establishing/explaining the culture, government and everyday life of the QualityLand's citizenry.

Here's the best part about the set-up time: it's totally worth it, and the way the dominoes are being placed is enjoyable/entertaining enough that even if the results were duds, I wouldn't really have minded all that much. The icing on the cake is that the plot works well (we've all seen too many examples of elaborate worldbuilding that accompany a story that's not worth it).

This is a world given over to algorithms, a world where the algorithms of various retail entities know so much about their customers that they no longer have to wait for a customer to order something to provide it—no, the algorithm will know what you're going to want and will deliver it before you know you want it.

Not only are all your possessions provided for you in this manner, the algorithm decides what kind of career you will pursue, but it will also guide and govern your romantic life, your health care, and so on and so on.

It even gets into politics—so much so that during the course of this novel, there is an android running for president—because, we're told repeatedly (mostly by the candidate), “machines don't make mistakes.” An android chief of state (the theory goes) will better all of society because the android will know what's needed.

At each step of the way, as each aspect of society is introduced and explained, as each character appears for the first time, it's done in a way that will make you grin, chuckle, or laugh. The world is so zany, so...out there—and yet, completely recognizable as a natural progression of our world/society/culture.

Unlike so many satirical novels, the ending of this novel doesn't get out of control. The plotlines come to natural conclusions and resolve in a satisfying way.

The characters—from the Everyman Peter Jobless, to the campaign manager (she can give Malcolm Tucker some lessons on the use of words as weapons), to the history teacher's trouble-maker daughter (in-person to public officials or in online comments), to Peter's collection of electronic companions—are wonderful. They're a little better rounded than I'm used to in satires.

There's a wonderful playful quality to the language, making the whole thing a barrelful of fun. I'm assuming that Searle captured the feel of the original in that, and did a great job. There's an acronym that's used a couple of times, that I think may be funny in the original, but doesn't translate into anything (at least as far as I can see). That one thing aside, the ability to make a translated text feel so natural, so easy is no small feat.

QualityLand is a fun read t's a thought-provoking read, it is (occasionally) a frightening read as you realize how close to this dystopia we are (and how fast we're running to it). I strongly recommend this one.







My thanks to Tracy Fenton and Compulsive Readers for the invitation to participate in this tour and the materials (including a copy of the novel) provided.

Sehr amüsantes Buch. Ich war sehr fasziniert von den Details bei den Anspielungen. Besonders lustig ist es, wenn man die anderen Bücher des Autoren kennt, da er sehr oft (subtil) auf sie verweist. Gerade bei der Hörbuchvariante bekommen die Charaktere noch deutlich mehr Tiefe.

Wie die Känguru-Bücher erneut sehr unterhaltsam. Kling besitzt einfach eine sehr feine Beobachtungsgabe über gesellschaftliche Trends und kann daher eine recht zielsichere, bösartige, aber nicht von Ressentiment durchzogene Gesellschaftskarikatur zeichnen.

Etwas überladen schien mir die Welt mit Spielereien zum Begriff “Quality”, selbst wenn der Titel selbst dafür vermutlich Rechtfertigung gibt. Indem ständig alles mit dem Begriff “Quality” behaftet ist, erschien die Welt teilweise etwas einfarbig. Den “Optimierungszwang” hätte man noch vielschichtiger darstellen können. Andererseits könnte die “Einfarbigkeit” der Welt auch gerade eine gute Beschreibung der Welt darstellen.

Ebenso fand ich die Idee mit den Nachnamen, die im Zuge der Ökonomisierung durch Berufsbezeichnungen ersetzt wurden, eher störend. Dadurch ging die Individualität der Charaktere etwas verloren (das könnte zwar ebenfalls zum dystopischen Universum passen, jedoch kommt diese Geschichte natürlich auch nicht um das Zeichnen von interessanten Individuen herum - das Individuum zu eliminieren kann also niemals Teil des Erzählens sein), ich konnte mich jedoch daran gewöhnen. So starke Hauptfiguren wie das Doppelgespann von Kleinkünstler und Känguru der alten Bücher gab es hier meines Erachtens nicht.

Insgesamt sehr positiv: ich konnte viel grinsen, etwas lachen und war fast nie gelangweilt.