Mother Ocean

“They’re my split personality!” says Richard Powers of Playground’s main characters, the computer-obsessed Todd and the bookworm Rafi. (Image by Dean D. Dixon; book cover courtesy of Richard Powers)

In his 14th novel, Richard Powers, ’78 LAS, MA ’80 LAS, weaves a complex, multigenerational story about artists, tech billionaires, oceanographers and a remote island in the South Pacific.

You focused the book on two major, seemingly unrelated themes: the vastness of the ocean and the possibilities of AI. What commonalities do you see between them? AI started in the ocean along with the rest of us. We’re all part of an enormous, interconnected web of things that’s evolving and exploring the environment through play and other forms of intelligence. That’s true of the initial, single-cell creatures that began in the ocean four-and-a-half billion years ago, and it’s true of the digital creations we’re making today.

Much of the novel takes place on the Pacific island of Makatea, which was decimated by phosphorus mining. What made you want to write about that? Makatea was completely consumed by the colonialism of Western powers, trying to profit from its natural resources, and I thought it would be fascinating to explore the disproportion in interests between the people from these huge, capitalist nations and the small number of people on the island, whose way of life was so different.

Your main characters go to school at Illinois during the 1980s and ’90s. Why here, and why then? It’s essential for Todd [a future AI pioneer] to be here, working in the building where the web browser is being created. For him to have this pivotal moment, he couldn’t have been anywhere else, at any other time.