Ready Player One

This week blog, is going to be a reflexion of the book "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline. The following two paragraphs are going to be used as the starting point of this reflexion.

Morrow wrote in his autobiography that he’d left GSS because … he felt that the OASIS had evolved into something horrible. “It had become a self-imposed prison for humanity,” he wrote. “A pleasant place for the world to hide from its problems while human civilization slowly collapses, primarily due to neglect.” (p. 120)

(Halliday speaking) “I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn’t know how to connect with people there. I was afraid, for all of my life. Right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real.” (p. 364)

In order to make a more accurate reflexion, the following questions are going to help to achieve that.

Do you agree with the two previous quotations?

Yes, I believe virtual worlds in general are a way to escape reality. It is easy to interact with people you don't actually see, if you have a problem with someone you just blocked it. The real world is far a more dangerous this, you can't undo things, but everything in the real world is "For REAL" you are going to have it and you are going to feel it, so it's define worth the risk.

Do you personally see any virtues in a system like the OASIS?

Of course, “OASIS does tons of good for people,” the techie protested. “Their schools are the best primary educational system in the world, and they’re free.“ (Lacero, Andy Weir) You can meet people from all over the world and learn a lot of new thing, languages, customs, songs, literature, etc.

Do you think our value system (personal and cultural values) could be altered if we spent most of our time in an OASIS like system?

Definitely, I believe people turns cold in social networks, it's easier to be rude, and it's easier to say what you think without having any consequences. 

Do you think that there are any similarities between the OASIS and the way we currently use IT technology (computers, game consoles, smart phones, etc.) and social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.)?

Yes, but not at the same level, I might even say that in OASIS you hace a change to learn something, and these social networks are used mostly for gossip and entertain. We (human race) are easily absorbed by this because we want to escape from reality, we want to live in our fantasies and that can lead to awful accidents.

Did you find any interesting resemblances between the dystopic “real world” presented in “Ready Player One” and those presented in other works of fiction such as “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, “The Hunger Games”, “The Matrix”, “Soylent Green”, etc.

Sure, it's a little bit frightening that most authors see the future the same way, the riches way up in an private space and the poor fighting to survive, to live with a lot of people in the same space between garbage. I hope we don't get to that.

Do you think it’s possible, technologically speaking, to have something similar to the OASIS by the years 2040 or 2050?

I certainly do, we are already advance with augmented reality technology and virtual worlds, so it's just a matter if time.

References:

Lacero by Andy Weir: Lacero.

Ernest Cline. Ready Player One. Broadway Books, 2011. ISBN: 9780307887443

WarGames

WarGames is a really interesting movie of the 1980's which talk about how technology was viewed in those years.

The premise is that a smart boy is able to enter to the Department Of Defense database and he discover a game which turns out to be a simulation for a real world war. So the the story moves around the kid trying to undo his mistake.

In the 80's it was believed that computers could be of great danger, if someone unauthorized get in, could administrate the launch of the misiles, bank accounts, etc. So this movie was a perfect example of that. Once the boy began the game, it (the game) took control over the United States DOD machines and show in the screens what was actually happening in the simulation, making everyone believe that Russia was actually preparing for the third world war.

Eventually the scientists discover that it just a simulation taking place, but still everyone just keep playing alone with it (movie stuff I suppose). So the boy go to the man that created the simulation in order to make everyone come to reason. But by the time that happens, the simulation has already stolen the codes to launch every USS misiles. So now the problem is how to make the machine knows it is only a simulation and it could never win the war. Lucky for us, the program has a really good artificial intelligence so by playing "tick tac toe" with himself over an over again it discovers that there are some games that are impossible to win. The simulation begins to compute all the possible result of wars with every country and sees that there's not a possibility to win either way, so it aborts the simulation and everyone is happy.

Reference:

“WarGames” directed by John Badham in 1983.