This was my first book by Richard Powers, though I’ve been wanting to read The Overstory for a while, which won a Pulitzer Prize and came recommended by a former work friend. This book, Playground, was on a lot of 2024 Best Of lists and the beautiful cover certainly drew me in.
The novel covers many decades and characters. In the 1940s, Evelyne Boulieu is a French girl who is thrown by her father into a pool with the first Aqualung and who becomes a renowned diver and marine researcher. In the 80’s, Rafi and Todd are brilliant but unlikely friends who bond over their love of strategy games. Ani is a Pacific Islander who meets Rafi and Todd in college while studying art.
In the present time, Todd is a tech billionaire who is suffering from Lewy Body dementia, so he’s recording his memories. Rafi and Ani live on the remote island of Makatea in French Polynesia, with their two adopted children and about 80 other residents. Their way of life on Makatea is threatened when a corporation proposes to use the island to launch floating cities that will operate independently of any nation, thus being free of all regulation. The island residents have to decide whether to support or oppose this.
Powers is a skilled storyteller as he weaves together these different storylines and time periods. Each of his characters have distinct voices and experiences, so it was not difficult to follow. I loved Evie’s story, and I gravitated to the storylines about nature, the ocean, and island life. I was thrilled to learn that Evie is based on a real-life woman, Dr. Sylvia Earle. And I enjoyed learning about Makatea, which was devastated in the early 1900’s by phosphate mining but has since been left mostly alone with its less than 100 residents.
She said it simply and hid nothing: diving was the only time she was not going somewhere else, the only time she was happy inside her body and at ease in the world. And so her book felt like going home. Her pages had the salt-breeze smell of the sea, and the words underneath her words teemed like the waters themselves, where nine-tenths of the native species of possible thoughts had yet to be identified.
I was less engaged by the detailed descriptions of computer programming and chess, but I was intrigued by Powers’ description of Todd creating one of the first social media platforms, a site called “Playground” where people interact, post opinions, rate each other’s opinions, and amass and spend resources. Todd is mainly interested in how to build, expand, and profit off this site, though as he looks back he understands the extensive effects of social media on privacy, relationships, and extremism.
People in my field always talked about “human equivalence” as the gold standard for machine intelligence. But the smartest people in the world gave away their data for free without bothering to read the contract. Data was life. Little in the world was more valuable. If giving away your data was the benchmark, maybe artificial general intelligence was going to be easier to achieve than we thought.
I’m struggling to describe this book, so I’ll just say it’s a sweeping story of our relationship with the natural world. But it’s also a story about friendships, and how people are driven by their passions, and by playing games. And then there’s a whole other level about artificial intelligence that I’m still pondering.
I recommend this book if you like thought-provoking, complicated stories focusing on nature and science – particularly if you’re interested in the ocean. There’s a lot to unpack in this book, and while I didn’t love everything about it, it’s worth the read.
