In the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline there exists a virtual world called the OASIS. In this virtual world there exists almost anything a person can dream of. Things like space ships with hyper drives, or magical powers, or worlds that are solely dedicated to one theme/game, or even areas with no science or magic allowed. This virtual world is leagues above anything that humanity can currently create (mostly due to infrastructure). Being so above human possibilities allowed the company behind the OASIS, Gregarious Simulation Systems, to become filthy rich. The main programmer, Halliday, also got rich as he is the genius behind not only the company but also the OASIS itself. While this may seem like a great opportunity for programmers to become rich just like Halliday, there are serious negatives that come with it. Those negatives severely outweigh any possible positives that come from making a virtual world like the OASIS. Programmers around the world should not develop an OASIS-like virtual world due to it making humanity stagnate, being addictive to people, and potentially becoming monopolistic.
Firstly, programmers around the world should not develop an OASIS-like virtual world as it makes humanity stagnate. Humanity stagnates as there is a virtual world where everything is better. With this stagnation there would be no reason for humanity to try to progress in making new technologies as the OASIS has technologies that are years ahead of humanity’s current level. There would also be no reason for humanity to try to be better. Why would humanity clean up the ocean and the air when there’s a world with air that makes a person feel as though they are taking your first breath in your life? In Ready Player One, Morrow, one of Halliday's partners, writes an autobiography that reveals he left the company due to feeling as though the company had strayed from its original path of just making games. He felt as though the OASIS was a prison for humanity that caused it to slowly wither away. He said the reason was that society was being neglected. (120). This evidence shows that humanity is hiding from the problems of the real world by escaping into the virtual one. Humanity neglecting its problems leads to no new developments in any type of science or social aspects. Without development Humanity will stay in this era forever. Never to explore the stars or create new crazy technologies as Humanity will be stuck in the OASIS Thus showing that humanity is stagnating and proving that programmers should not develop a virtual world like the OASIS.
Secondly, programmers around the world should not develop an OASIS-like virtual world due to it being addictive to humanity. Many people throughout the story are shown to have an unhealthy reliance on the OASIS, due to factors like how it can change anything about you or like how it can serve as an escape from reality. These factors come to the point where a majority of people need the OASIS to function, like an addiction. In Ready Player One it says “Art3mis: I beg to differ. Everything about our online personas is filtered through our avatars, which allows us to control how we look and sound to others. The OASIS lets you be whoever you want to be. That’s why everyone is addicted to it” (171). In Ready Player One it states “She used to have to force me to log out every night, because I never wanted to return to the real world. Because the real world sucked.” (18). These pieces of evidence show that the OASIS is addictive because people want to soley rely on the OASIS to fix their problems as, to them, there is no other way to do this. Being in this world they are either forced to change who they are, or forced to change their world. Both paths require them to go into the OASIS if they want to feel good about themselves or their world. Stuck with a reality that has no hopes of granting your wishes, they are forced to retreat into the OASIS. This makes them dependent on the OASIS on everything from social life to private life. This dependency is an addiction as they will never be able to let go of the OASIS. Thus showing that programmers should not develop a virtual world like the OASIS as it is too addictive for humanity.
Programmers around the world should not develop an OASIS-like virtual world due to it potentially becoming monopolistic. The OASIS as stated before, is humanity’s escape from the real world. Everybody relies on the OASIS to some extent whether that be for work, school, or social life. For some this virtual world is everything, and so if a company were to take over GSS and charge exorbitant prices then every human in the world would have no choice but to hand over their money. Meaning that if this virtual world were to ever be owned by a company that was profit-driven first it would turn humanity’s life into hell. In Ready Player One Wade narrates “Like most gunters, I was horrified at the thought of IOI taking control of the OASIS. The company’s PR machine had made its intentions crystal clear. IOI believed that Halliday never properly monetized his creation, and they wanted to remedy that. They would start charging a monthly fee for access to the simulation. They would plaster advertisements on every visible surface. User anonymity and free speech would become things of the past. The moment IOI took it over, the OASIS would cease to be the open-source virtual utopia I’d grown up in. It would become a corporate-run dystopia, an overpriced theme park for wealthy elitists.” (33). This shows that if any company with ideals like IOI were to own something like the OASIS it would turn the virtual world into a dystopia. This would leave both the real world and virtual world a terrible place to live as everyone would be forced to pay this fee. This is due to the reliance that society has on the OASIS. Thus showing that programmers should not develop a virtual world like the OASIS.
Programmers around the world should not develop a virtual world like the OASIS as it would make humanity stagnate, cause addiction in people, and be monopolistic. The OASIS is a ginormous success in the universe of Ready Player One as can be seen with GSS' net worth being valued at 240 billion dollars. This is mainly due to the fact that the OASIS, in the Ready Player One universe, is way better at granting a player's wishes than reality. Through the tech that the OASIS runs on, things out of this world are possible. Things that defy even the physics of reality are possible. Throughout history, there have always been downsides to certain technologies, but most of the time, those technologies had great benefits that outweigh those negatives. The technology that is the OASIS, does not have benefits that outweigh its negatives. The OASIS exists solely in the imaginatory confines of the reader’s mind, never to break through to the real world. To allow humanity to progress and thrive the OASIS should stay in there, in that box that is imagination
Cline, Ernest. Ready Player One. Random House Publishing Group, 2012.
We were tasked with creating a persuasive essay that was based off of a claim that you could choose. I chose the claim that asked if programmers should create a virtual world like the OASIS in Ready Player One.