Escape to the OASIS

In the novel Ready Player One, the year is 2045 and there exists an alternate, virtual universe known as the OASIS. People choose to spend their time connected into this world while they maintain their real identities anonymous. It seems to be so much easier to live in the OASIS than in real life; you can be whoever you want to be and you have endless possibilities as to what you can do, from "traveling" around the world to creating and accomplishing things that you could not accomplish in the real world. The OASIS gives people the opportunity to live their lives as they wish, and to reach their true potential... virtually.

In the novel, people, including Wade, seen to prefer to live in a game rather than face the "real world", which seems to be a horrible place in 2045. How realistic is this depiction of the future? In my opinion, not very. I do not think it is very likely that in the future, people will succumb to technology to the point of spending most of their time immersed in it, living a fantasy life. I know that many people today are addicted to video games, online virtual worlds, social media and/or other technology-based ways of communication. However, I do not think humanity will reach a point where the virtual is ultimately preferred over the real. Sure, technology has its many advantages, but it can never truly replace the actual touchable, tangible, emotional, real human interactions.

As I mentioned in my paper for Project 1, there is something personal and intimate about face-to-face interaction that cannot be replaced by other methods of communication. Avatars only mimic human expressions and emotions, the lack of human presence makes communication a fake interaction. Feelings and emotions are what essentially make us human. In the book, Wade knows his best friend Aech through OASIS, and only interacts with him in the virtual world. How real is this friendship? Who lies behind Aech's game controller? Wade has befriended Aech's avatar, but in the end he is just a character created and controlled by a person whose personality might go beyond what his character is actually portraying. A world consisting of fake relationships does not sound like a very happy one, and I think human's need for real interaction will prevent the world from reaching a time like the one in the book, where humans escape into the virtual and avoid reality.

Living Another LIfe

The world Wade lives in is a mess. You could say it reminds me of the real world in the matrix. The difference is that while most people in the Matrix don't know the truth Wade and others like him log onto the Oasis just escape reality. The world is a disaster with people struggling to survive. In the Oasis you can be whoever you want to be. Everybody know the truth but prefer to hide in a virtual world. They have no other way of making their lives bearable. 

The whole quest for the Easter egg is collective attempt by those who participate in it to escape their real lives. The older generations lives in the 'Good old days' when everything was plentiful and life wasn't a struggle for survival. Maybe some people just wanted to live in the world that had been. Wade like the gamer Adam from Alone Together, does not want to face the reality of his situation. the Oasis then becomes a means of escape for all those who do not want to face the problems of everyday life. You could say that they are collectively taking the 'blue pill' on a daily basis. They know the truth but do not ant to deal with it.

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There have always been ways to escape reality for those who looked for it. Books, movies and video games are all media through which people try to forget about their troubles and live in another world. The Oasis offers users a chance to be whatever want. How may people in today's world would opt to spend all their time logged on? How many already do? When does a game go from entertainment to addiction or need? One thing I believe that the book made clear was the worsening energy problems and social conditions added to the allure of the artificial world. How can we avoid this? Do we have to?

What is Really Real

Living in a computer simulation is not as unlikely as one might think. If we consider the amazing speed at which technology is advancing today, it becomes extremely likely that we will soon have the ability to create our own simulated Universe, perhaps able to create simulated life. If we reach this point it is almost ridiculous to believe that we are not someone else’s computer simulation. When thinking about life itself we are constrained to the physical laws of this Universe and the physical constraints of time. In my opinion there are multiple layers of the Universe that humanity will never be able to comprehend. Thus it seriously interests me to picture a Universe outside of ours that is the basis of creation for our possibly “simulated” Universe.

            Working outside of our physical laws in the medium of another Universe we can do literally anything. The laws of conservation of matter and energy could be inexistent allowing things to just pop out of nowhere. In this manner we have an explanation for the Big Bang. Outside of these physical constraints it could make sense for a species to formulate our Universe in a simulation with physical laws of their own choosing. My idea of course expands on the general idea of The Matrix. If our 21^st century life is nothing more than a simulation, who’s to say that our entire Universe, everything that we hold to be true and real, is nothing more than a simulation?

            Thinking too hard on this topic causes reality to cease to hold any meaning. Our precious awareness, already constrained by our animalistic senses, is now constrained by the idea of reality itself. 

Decisions Decisions....

I am would not considered myself as a "hardcore" gamer. I play once in a while Fifa and that's about it, but I can say that it get me out of my nerves when I do not win a game, am I the only one? Also I cannot avoid always blaming the computer, "I said to pass it that way" "I was pressing the A button not X""Run faster" "Oh i hate this controller", and the list is endless. But what is my point with this? Over the past few weeks we have always talked about cons and pros of technology; and I have always emphasize on one point "IT IS NOT TECHNOLOGIES FAULT, IS HOW WE USE IT".

I cannot stress enough, how much it bothers me when we blame a bad thing or bad action on technology, like Turkle does for example. This course has been sort of a "red pill" to me, it has opened my eyes and made realize until what extent we humans are able to take blame or responsibility for our actions. I realized that whenever we can take the blame from ourselves we do, like Huesca and Carr mentioned on their articles, but when it comes to success it is always thanks to us, it seems as technology only plays a  negative role in our life.

That's why I titled this post "Decisions Decisions", once again, it is our decisions of how we use technology how affects our daily life, it is our choice to use these technologies, it is our decision how we develop these innovations, because at the end everything comes down to our decisions.

Now the ball is on your court, what do you choose to open your eyes or to  keep pretending nothing is wrong, now is your turn to choose...

Ahh the Brick

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In my paper, I stated a Claim, and did not support it, so I was awarded with the brick. I would like to restate my claim here and support it if possible, or at least explain how I would support it. I claimed that: "Sometimes parents, whom have experienced disconnect, can teach their children the value of disconnect by taking them somewhere like camping, and taking away electronics, but that generation is dying out, and parents are taking their children camping less and less." In my first attempt to support this claim, per usual I started with Google, and typed the claim into the search bar. There were really no sources with data supporting my claim. The only websites that popped up were about how to take children camping, or tips and benefits written by bloggers, or magazine articles. This could mean that parents these days do have a general interest in taking their children camping, but once again, I cannot support this claim, because I have very little evidence, so I continued to look for more information. I then turned to more academic sources to find information like JSTOR, and Google scholar. I found several articles that talked about how parents spend time with their children and how to plan a camping trip at first. After adjusting my search terms, I found articles about organized camping that actually refuted my claim. One stated in the abstract that camping has actually increased in the twentieth century. It talked about how camping is used to sort of re-establish familiarity with one another and the outdoors and there has been an increase in camping activities for youth groups and for educational purposes, which makes sense, but when I was writing my paper I didn't consider this option. I now see the opposite of my claim is plausible, and supportable. I assumed my claim was true, but now I see it is in fact not, and I support the claim proposing the opposite. Below, I have attached some of the sources I found that support my new claim, and I understand now how important it is to support a claim, or at least to not assume it is true without first checking the facts.

Sources I found on google:
http://www.michianafamilymagazine.com/The-Family-Magazine-of-Michiana/February-2013/Camping-Tips-for-Parents/ 

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2011/09/08/camping-with-kids/

Sources I found on JSTOR

Organized Camping

Reynold E. Carlson

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , Vol. 313, Recreation in the Age of Automation (Sep., 1957), pp. 83-86

How American Children Spend Their Time

Sandra L. Hofferth and John F. Sandberg

Journal of Marriage and Family , Vol. 63, No. 2 (May, 2001), pp. 295-308 my 

The Next Deke?

Deke was fascinated with a video game called “Fokkers&Spads,” where players
engaged in dogfights as war fighter pilots. To beat the top fighter, Deke betrayed
Nance. Unscrupulously stealing the hype from Nance, Deke won the game. Deke
imagined that all gamblers would come to celebrate, to drink, and to speak with
him after his victory. To his surprise, nobody there wanted to meet with him?
. The authors depicted the bitterly received victory of Deke, “[the audience]
radiated contempt, even hatred. For an interminably drawn-out moment, the air
trembled with potential violence… and then someone turned to the side, hawked
up phlegm, and spat on the floor. The crowd broke up, muttering, one by one
drifting into the darkness.” The powerful ending challenged me to look deeper
into the character of Deke, who made himself so ambitious that he was unable to
keep friends.

A shot of liquid in a blue plastic vial, the enhancement hype that Deke used
in Dogfight, escalated his level of concentration as well as accelerated neuron
interface. According to the utilitarian principle, no matter which methods
that Deke used to win the game, the outcome was set: Deke would win the
game. On moral grounds, the process of success is much more valuable than
the consequence of success itself. That was why, I think, the audience radiated
contempt, even hatred. As for Deke, he was left with nothing but pain from the
hype crash.

What if the only way to survive was to eat hype? Should human enhancement
drugs such as hype apply to future warfare? The onboard computers monitored
human mind and decided when to active the sluice gates and command soldiers.
Is this story a metaphor for the application of human enhancements in warfare?
Although drugs can help people win a contest or even a war, one should be
aware of the consequences. realize pathetically that nobody will be left to
accompany, to listen to his or her story.

In relation to Jamais Cascio’s Get Smarter, we had already embraced an era of
cognitive enhancement. The imagined drug, Hype might be invented given the
moving pharmacological arm races. Can real human capacity win the hype at the
end? Does Cascio's idea still hold true? This is a story that questions the morality
of future human enhancement. Will we suffer the same consequences that Deke
did？

When enough is enough

             

               

To me Dogfight is not only a foreboding of the not-so-distant future, but a reflection of today’s heavy gamers. There may be many Dekes out there today whose sole purposes in life are games. They find peace nowhere except in the virtual world. One Deke which we find in Alone Together is Adam. While reading the story, I increasingly came to associate Deke with Adam and other addicted gamers. It is addiction that reduces Deke to lonely sadist. Similarly, it is the addiction to games that forces people like Adam to lock themselves in a cocoon and isolate themselves from the world.  Nance, to me, is an embodiment of real-world social interactions. Deke’s murder of Nance for a small dosage of “hype” can be compared with heavy gamers’ slaughter of their real world social connections for a few more hours of online gaming.

Although heavy gamers might constitute only a small fraction of the overall gaming community, the tides are turning. If Singer’s exponential growth theory is correct, we can anticipate the arrival revolutionary gaming consoles. This, coupled with an increased variety of games, will induce a rise in gamer population. Therefore, number of heavy gamers is expected to increase exponentially as well. This puts us in a precarious situation. We face the same problem that Singer predicted in the book. As sophistication of weapons increases at an alarming rate, we continue to fall behind in the race to introduce rules that govern their use. Similarly, due to the augmentation of the gaming experience with every new console and game, we are lagging in our attempts to put into effect gaming laws or ethics (Although considerable efforts have been made to introduce laws for the gaming world, they have been limited to the prevention piracy). Deke, Adam or other heavy gamers did not emerge due to some genetic mutation but due to their failure to realize when enough is enough. They live in a world which does not have any norms to govern online gaming. We must questions the gaming ethics of today and develop them for tomorrow. We must know when to pull the plug!

Humans before Robots

Change is inevitable and there’s nothing we can do about it, but the “pace of all this change” should receive our full attention.  Before we even introduce more advanced robots to war we have to figure out how to use them properly and effectively because “anything that can go wrong will go wrong,” especially if we are unprepared. “We have to get it right the first time” (434). There’s very little room for human error. Essentially, in order for nothing to go wrong, we’re going to have to be perfect. However, perfection is unattainable, especially among humans.  And what if it’s not possible to get it right the first time? Will we be doomed? What happens now is what determines the future and if we screw up now, the results could be detrimental.

“Mistakes are not just in robot nature, but also in human nature” (434). We put so much trust into technology, but we forget that we are the ones who create it. If humans are prone to making errors, our robots in turn will as well. That’s why we keep fixing them, because they’re not doing what we want them to do. This then contributes to the swift change in technology.

Additionally, if people decide to remain ignorant and “fear what they don’t know,” how will they be able to adjust to this rapid change in technology? They are avoiding the challenges that they must face.

Ignorance, lack of preparation, and fast paced change don’t create a pleasant mix when going into war, but unfortunately these three components are what war has been comprised of for a long time. We need to work on improving ourselves before we begin to improve technology. We’re not doing ourselves a favor by not learning from our mistakes and could possibly be left behind if we don’t address the problems that human nature burdens us with.

Yes, we have had these same conflicts in the past and still succeeded, but as science fiction is becoming more realistic than ever we need to consider how our flaws and innate desire to acquire more than what we already have will hurt us even more in the future. Will we be able to handle these mutating conflicts like we did in the past?

There’s also the issue of whether we should focus more on creating better technology for war or maintaining “society’s collective intellect, energy, drive, and resources” (436). Robots aren’t inexpensive and require an abundance of input from the people in this country. If technology continues to move this quickly, we will eventually be drained and stripped of our freedom because humans are wired for war.                                                        

Is War That Good?

In chapter 16, Singer talks about the importance of public opinion when dealing with war. Singer mentions his discussion with Josiah Bunting on how Americans have lost interest in wars. The side effects of this loss is that Americans also lose "any sense of unity for a nation" and "the likelihood of bad policy, and more lost wars" increases (319). Singer and Bunting are portraying war as a positive aspect of American society and I cannot bring myself to agree. Yes, the country did unite during WW1 and WW2.  Yes, they did care what happened overseas. Unity and participation are both good aspects of the American public but is war really the only way we can attain these two qualities? Do we really want to go back to the days of WW1 where we had to ration our goods necessary for survival? Do we really want to connect to one another over the fears of a foreign attack? Whether we're focusing on killing others or the men dying for our country, do we really want death to be one of the most important parts of American culture? 

I can understand where Bunting is coming from. Americans aren't exactly unified at the moment and it must be frustrating for an army general to know that the war is losing attention. Robotics would take away everything Bunting knows about war and aggravate the divide between the public and war, but is this a bad thing? After a century full of war, Americans are tired. Americans are tired of fighting, they're tired of fearing, and they're tired of losing men they cherish. Robotics is the easy answer to this. Of course, with robotic weapons comes it's  own list of problems but those are new problems, not the ones we've been consistently beaten down with over the past few decades. And who knows, robotics might bring new life to American interest. It might fascinate people to the point where Americans begin to rally around robotic weapons, effectively unifying the country around war once again. The thing with robotics is that we don't know. The future is uncertain and it will be interesting to see what unfolds.

The Power of the Human Mind

Robots can do a lot of things that humans can do. Oftentimes, robots can do things that far surpass human abilities. While the power of robots may be immense, though, no amount of machinery can replace the human mind.

In a previous post, we discussed the idea that robots are more well-equipped for warfare than humans. Perhaps this is true. Singer calls humans the "weakest link" in military combat, discussing the ways in which humans are inferior to robots on the battlefield (62). Humans get hungry, thirsty, tired, dirty, fearful, etc., "problems" that can all be solved by replacing them with robots. Robots can just fight without rest, for they do not possess any of these biological needs or inhibitions. But what is being missed here in the significance, and maybe even the--is it possible?--advantage of actually having a brain. No amount of wiring can stand in for human emotion.

Later on in Wired for War, Singer brings up Cohen's discussion of the psychology of the human versus robot dilemma in a light that makes readers reconsider the importance of having real, live people on the battlefield. As Cohen believes, "human motivation has usually been the key to victory or defeat" (297-298). Defeat? Not so great. But if human motivation is a key to victory, maybe a brain isn't such a bad thing to have around. From Cohen's argument, I take the idea that human motivation is an essential driving force behind battle and behind success. Without motivation, what are we fighting for? What is the point of war? (Not as if there is usually, in my opinion, a whole lot of point to begin with). War is already an empty shell of an activity, but it becomes so much more so without a living, caring will to carry it forward.

Then again, in a counterargument also brought to light by Cohen, robots can play an essential role for the winning side for just the same reason. Though motivation can push an army to victory, lack of motivation can ensure its defeat. Psychologically speaking, going up against a robot in war, a creation with none of the human flaws mentioned below, renders fighters "dispirit[ed]" and "helpless" (298). Opposing a robot kills motivation because they are not human, and therefore they are much less of an equal match. In this case, the human mind is a weakness. Robots do not perceive humans as terrifying because they do not have emotions, but humans may fear robots and allow their morale to weaken through this fear.

So, is human determination a benefit? Is human emotion a weakness? And, more importantly, what does war become if it loses the one element that makes it human? Us.