Stranger than Fiction
“Being human totally sucks most of the time. Video games are the only thing that make life bearable.”— Ernest Cline, Ready Player One
Free for lunch today?
My friend pinged me on messenger. I received the notice on both of my iPhones, my laptop, and my external monitor. We set a time and a place.
Ping-pong table. Noon.
On my way outside, I passed by three colleagues wearing bulky virtual reality headsets — ignoring each other, but fully entertained — and another test-driving the electronic skateboard advertised at today’s ever-rotating and always-pink Pop-Up Shop. My friend and I considered the day’s lunch possibilities: the BBQ stand, the Food Truck, the Noodle Shop, the Sweet Stop, the Diner, the Pizza Place, the Nacho Stand, the Fromagerie, the Juice Bar. More options than many towns boast— and all free, one of many unreal benefits of working at one of the coolest companies in the world.
Nah. Salads today, we decided.
As we walked down the paved street, wide enough to need yellow dashes separating sides of foot and bike traffic, we discovered a Slurpee truck visiting campus, with a long line of young, happy people eagerly waiting for some afternoon sugar in the glistening California sun.
I took out my iPhone to snapchat the scene, something straight out of HBO’s Silicon Valley, and noticed several dozen others wandering beside me with their devices out, held up at arm length. A friendly heckler passed by and told us to stop searching for Pokémon. Because, I realized, that’s what everyone around me was doing.
July 2016
Over the last week, there has been public outrage over two police shootings, one broadcast on Live, reaching a massive audience. A robot took down a sniper who killed multiple police officers in retaliation.
The FBI decided not to indict the Democratic nominee for President, and a news anchor of the most popular news channel alleged sexual harassment against network’s charismatic chairman. And don’t get me started on Donald Trump.
A few weeks ago, the United Kingdom voted to exit the European Union, an occurrence previously deemed impossible by the political elite, and one that revealed a nation — and increasingly, a world — divided along educational and generational lines. The pound dropped in value, becoming the world’s weakest major currency.
We’ve been debating which hashtags to use to express our protest, who is allowed to be outraged and who isn’t, and what the change in currency means for upcoming travel plans.
And then, Pokémon GO was released, a revival of the cultural phenomenon from the 1990s, and for many, a breath of fresh air in an otherwise heavy, devastating moment in history.
Ready Player One
Our world is changing is bizarre ways, and the promises of science fiction are becoming reality, like, those in the dystopian future designed by Ernest Cline in his 2011 novel, Ready Player One.
The novel is set 25 years from now. The US economy has collapsed. The poor live in mobile trailers piled on top of each other in “stacks”. Unemployment is the norm. But there is an immersive virtual world called OASIS. The most stable currency available is OASIS money. Most people live in desperate poverty, and the best employer is a mega-corporation that builds the technology on which OASIS rests.
The main character, Wade Watts, lives divided between two worlds: the world of the dirt-poor orphan living in a rotting van, and the fantastical galaxy inside OASIS. His virtual life is an escape from his dismal real life.
In the book, 1980s pop-culture nostalgia rules. Old school video games, movies, bands, and trivia. A celebration for share cultural references binds communities together. And helps communities escape from the misery of economic meltdown and devastating climate change.
Sound familiar?
Stranger — and better? — than Fiction
It’s familiar, but different, and maybe, just maybe, better.
Last night, a friend posted on Live his experience at midnight in a local park, where hundreds of people gathered searching for Pokémon. Instead of being alone at home, playing video games, binge watching Netflix, or even strapped into virtual realities alone, these hundreds of people were together — in search of Pokémon, yes — but together and outside.
And the together part matters.
Because instead of shutting out the real world entirely, in exchange for this other reality that is better and more compelling, Pokémon GO uses augmented reality to place creatures and items in real locations, bringing people to places they don’t normally go, with people they don’t normally see, improving, in a way, the existing world.
And what this means for this moment in history is more than a game. The economy is rapidly changing. Machines are entering the workforce more and more, replacing jobs that used to belong to human beings alone. At MIT, I work in a lab that uses machine learning and deep learning to parse human speech and identify conversations. These new technologies are responsible for super-human level performance — so what does that mean for humans who can’t perform at a super human level?
Take the self-driving car, for instance. Some 20 million people’s jobs require a human being drive a car. So what will they do? What jobs will they have once that innovation is fully realized? And if there are no jobs for them, what will they do all day? Don a VR headset and gloves and play a game alone like Wade Watts?
Or take out a phone and explore a new neighborhood — together.
So believe it or not, this strange game that I haven’t played and don’t fully understand, has made me pretty optimistic about even my most dystopian fears for the future. Because it’s preserving that critical and fleeting human connection through which we learn, build, and evolve.
