The Optimization Machine is a deadpan narrative about a system designed to do one thing exceptionally well: optimize.
It begins inside a company, where artificial intelligence is introduced to reduce inefficiency, eliminate redundant processes and improve productivity. The results are initially impressive. Meetings disappear. Reports disappear. Departments disappear.
Eventually, the company itself becomes unnecessary.
Daniel, one of its former employees, continues using the same logic in an attempt to reorganize his own life. Work, mobility, relationships, consumption and even personal autonomy are progressively examined as systems capable of further optimization.
Every recommendation is reasonable.
That is the problem.
Systemic conclusion
Optimization does not necessarily eliminate dependency. It can perfect it.
A system reaches a particularly stable form of control when external instructions no longer need to be imposed because the individual has incorporated them as internal criteria for behaviour.
At that point, the system no longer requires continuous supervision.
The alternative operator has been found.
Available editions
English edition
Read The Optimization Machine — PDF
Spanish edition
Leer La máquina de optimización — PDF
Deadpan Series
In Search of an Alternative Operator explores systems that remain internally coherent while producing increasingly absurd outcomes.
The humour does not arise because the system fails.
It arises because it works.
Ralph Larson
Independent Edition
