Ethical Reflection on Ready Player One

Everything that has a beginning must have an end and this book is not the exception. During the course of S/W Design and Architecture, we read the book "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline and I would like to make an ethical reflection of this book through this blog entry. I would like to start with two quotes: 

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)

There are 3 questions that I would like to discuss with these quotes and with the book. 

1. Do you agree with the two previous quotations?

Yes, I partly agree with the two previous quotations. I don't think that we can blame a tool made for entertain its users and that allows them to get all the knowledge that they wanted or needed. I think that who might be blamed are its users for its misuse, people sometimes use technology in a bad way. People can use the OASIS to escape as long as they don't hurt anybody. In the other hand, I think that happiness is something very subjective, what makes somebody happy might not make other. So as reality, we can't ensure that something is real since we depend on the things that our senses transmit to us. 

2. 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, I think that what can change is the way we express to someone that is valuable for us, people used to express to someone that is valuable with handwritten letters, writing how much they loved and cherished them, but nowadays people use emails or chats to express that and I think that in the future there will be technologies that will allow us to tell someone that is valuable with telepresence or something that makes us feel the other person without being there. 

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

I think that it is possible since technology is evolving I am sure that we will have devices that will allow us to do something similar to the OASIS. I think we are close to that if we actually have VR Systems for videogames that make you feel like if you were in the game, now imagine what technologies could be implemented within the next 20 - 30 years. And we will also have computers that will let this be possible, for example, computers we currently have would have been a dream 20 years ago but nowadays they are very common things. That's why I think that we would have something similar to the OASIS. 

It would be great to have something like the OASIS, because people will have unlimited access to knowledge from old books to papers recently wrote and the fact the people can have education there is something impressive that will change the world, we will have very well prepared people that can create things that will change the world. And also people can be entertained with access to movies, music, videogames, etc. 

- References: 

Cline, E. (2011). Ready player one. New York: Broadway Paperbacks.