Ethical Reflection on Ready Player One

Objectives

During this activity:

Students will discuss the book titled “Ethical Reflection on Ready Player One”, by Ernest Cline.

This activity helps the student develop the following skills, values and attitudes: proficiency in English, critical thinking, and a vision of the international context.

Activity Description

This activity is about the book titled “Ethical Reflection on Ready Player One”, written by Ernest Cline in 2011, which you read during this semester. Publish a blog entry as stated below.

Deliverables

In your course blog, publish an original blog entry of at least 300 words in English, taking the following two quotes from the book as a starting point:

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?
Do you personally see any virtues in a system like the OASIS?
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?
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.)?
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.
Do you think it’s possible, technologically speaking, to have something similar to the OASIS by the years 2040 or 2050?
Can you envision a software architecture, using currently available technologies and tools, to build a system that could evolve to something like the OASIS?

Don’t forget to cite your sources.

Due date is Saturday, October 27.

Evaluation

This activity will be evaluated using the following criteria:

-10	The blog entry contains three or more grammar or spelling errors.
-30	The blog entry was published or shared after the due date.
-30	The blog entry cited some resource, but the corresponding reference was not included.
-50	The blog entry consists of less than 300 words.
-99	The blog entry is not in English.
-99	The blog entry was plagiarized in whole or in part.