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)
Reflect and discuss in your blog entry the answers to at least three or four of the following questions:
Do you agree with the two previous quotations?
I don't agree with the previous two quotations, yet they
seem to be terrible relevant in 2018 with the facebook crisis. Is it an
addiction? Maybe. But this might be the best thing to happen to people,
the equalization of the world. Parzival was dirt poor, but as he was
issued a system into OASIS, he didn't need to have more things in his
life, that was pretty awesome, he could escape poverty in a simple way.
That is really amazing. So for one side, yes, they neglected reality,
buy for another part, they allowed everyone to partake in wonderful
experiences.
Do you personally see any virtues in a system like the OASIS?
As mentioned in the system above, I see virtues in a system
like OASIS where we can integrate people from other contexts into a
life of fun and jobs from whenever they are.
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?
Yes, as always, people adapt to different ethic contexts so
that we can integrate them into society, and it would become a more
merithocrathic society, because as we can adopt different personas, we
can be who we really are. Nowadays we can see things like this in
Reddit, where we have anonymized personas, where people are more "raw",
or have weird or often ugly stuff, but that is because humanity has
this, not because anonymity causes this.
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.)?
I'd say there are some similarities, specially in the
positive feedback loop we get with social media, we often see that
clicking notifiactions of diferent systems, creates a framework of
repetitive self-motivation for entering Facebook or other social
networks, I think this works in a degree as OASIS. But OASIS promises so
much more than a screen. It promises experiences, which are more
valiable than conections.
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.
Well, there is a line of similarity to 1984 with the
element of Big Brother, and the theme seems to be the same: given enough
time for Big Brother to transform, they will transform and change into
this machine of hate, that self-propagates to fullfill their objective
no matter what. Also IOI is really similar in tactics to Big Brother in
1984. to "The Matrix", I didn't see that many similarities, but it is
interesting how on the worst times of the human species, machines come
to our aid to escape reality.
Do you think it’s possible, technologically speaking, to have something similar to the OASIS by the years 2040 or 2050?
Yes, it is really easy, but the motivation isn't there, we
would need amazingly expensive tools and machinery to make it real, and
Moore's law seems to be reaching it's limit. Moore and other experts
believe that Moore's law is going to end by 2050. That means that we are
going to have a really difficult time fooling our brain. Nowadays, one
of the major froteers of VR is that it causes sickness to lots of people
while wearing the googles, as our brain can understand that someting is
"off" about this.
Can you envision a software architecture, using
currently available technologies and tools, to build a system that could
evolve to something like the OASIS?
Yes, I can since procedural generation in Minecraft. Right
now you can explore unlimited worlds in Minecraft, one of the particular
youtubers I've seen is KurtJMac that is walking across a minecraft
world, for 5 years. He has several years walking east, and he is still
finding new stuff, that makes it incredibly likely for systems like
OASIS to acomplish things like this. Specially with ML and AI.
[1] Cline, E. (2011).
Ready player one. New York: Crown Publishers.
[4] Orwell, George.
. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1984.