Final: Winter 2021
When I first started my project, I was unsure of what approach to take. I was not very tech-savvy and didn’t know how to code. It had been a challenge doing the video game making assignment because of that. In that situation, I relied on my ability to write and draw. Heeding that strategy, I decided it would be best to create a textual analysis on Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. For my final project, I used the website wordcloud.com to create a visual of the text. I used almost all the words in the book except 1,327 of them. The colors that I chose are of the same color palette used on the cover of the book. I also chose to have the words arranged in the shape of Pacman, as Pacman is an 80s Video game and it is referenced multiple times within the book. I chose this book because it is one of my favorites and I feel that it is an excellent text to look into in our digital studies class.
In the book Ready Player One, you follow the story of Wade Watts, who lives in the year 2044. Practically everyone lives in a virtual reality world called the OASIS. The OASIS is where Wade spends the majority of his time. The OASIS creator, James Donovan Halliday, has passed away but left clues that lead to treasure within the game. Many people search relentlessly for his easter eggs, but many are not able to find them. That is, until Wade Watts finds the first one. This then leads him on an adventure through both the digital world and the real world to find the eggs, which are keys to get to the treasure. In the end, he does just that, and meets Holliday’s character Anorak.
I believe this book has a strong connection to our class because it is set in the digital world. It shows how technology can control us, even if our original intention was to control it. It also portrays how human connection might be like in a digital world such as the OASIS. There is more to this book than being an entertaining and easy read. It also contains many references to classic 80s videogames, which I appreciate a lot. In the real world, we are creating things that are either exact replicas of or similar conceptually to technology from past novels or movies. Some inventions were thought to be solely feasible within the creators’ imagination, but have over time become genuinely attainable. To name just a few: traveling to outer space, which was portrayed in the movie Le Voyage Dans La Lune in 1902, earbuds, which were first featured in Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, and flying cars, shown in Blade Runner. By planting the imaginative seed of possible technologies, we can be inspired to create more in the future. When looking at inventions similar to those portrayed in the book Ready Player One, one that stands out significantly to me is Virtual reality. We have just started the creation of virtual reality. I see a future where we could go on vacations with our whole family from the comforts of our homes, where a medical student could practice on virtual people before even stepping foot in a hospital, and most importantly, a future where social media will vastly change from what we see today.
Something that I think will be needed for the future is superior cybersecurity to what we have right now. Let’s says we do end up like the society in Ready Player One. Who will be keeping our data safe now that we are physically on the internet? I think it would be interesting to see how possible technologies like facial recognition, or even possibly DNA recognition would work if the technology in this narrative was to be implemented in real life. Overall, I think this book is an essential read, not only for this class but also for any user of the worldwide web.
Citations:
Johnson, Dave. “9 Predictions from Old Sci-Fi Movies That Actually Came True.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 11 May 2019, www.businessinsider.com/sci-fi-movie-predictions-2019-5.
