Ready Player One?

I strongly urge the reader to go out and buy a copy of Ernest Cline’s masterpiece Ready Player One. Not only does the book tell a gripping story but offers an insightful prediction of what future dependency on immersive technology could mean. The main concept of the story centres on the creation of “The Oasis” a vast, virtual universe through which players can interact. This matrix-esqu environment has people all over the world escaping to their digital paradise instead of engaging with the real world. Why should you bother to fulfil ambitions in the real world when you can have instant satisfaction fulfilling your wildest fantasises within a virtual one?

The book’s central surrounding philosophy proceeds to ask many questions related to the moral validity of engaging in virtual universes. I bring this up now because, as I write this, technology allowing this kind of full immersion is already in development. Omnidirectional treadmills and Haptic gloves, devices used to simulate the sensations of movement and touch are within late stages of development and could be easily available to the consumer within less than 20 years. Video games and simulations are becoming so life like and addictive, people are donating time from their real life pursuits to focus on their virtual avatar. This indeed poses an interesting moral dilemma. From someone who wants to investigate immersive technologies both creatively and critically in the future, I cannot, nor should not, ignore the very real effects immersive technology can have on people. However, despite this, I can also not reconcile with the idea that that these technologies should be banned outright. To propose such an idea is missing the real point behind the problem, which my uneducated self will now propose to you, the reader, as I am clearly the most qualified and capable person to do so. Traditional drugs studies involving laboratory Mice have always involved a lone Mouse alone in a cage with two bottles of water. One laced with a drug and the other normal. In all cases, the Mouse would gorge itself silly on the drug and most likely die. However, Canadian psychologist Bruce K Alexander noticed something within this experiment; the Mice had nothing to do inside the cage. Nothing and no one to interact with. He subsequently invented Rat Park. A veritable paradise for Mice where they had an abundance of friends and toys to have sex with and play with respectively. Now, when the two sources of water were placed in the cage, the laced water was hardly ever used. Because the Mice were contented with their environment, they felt no need to use a chemically altering substance to escape from their predicament. I understand that people are considerably different to Mice and these situations can be difficult to generalise. But the study does show an interesting relationship between lack of life satisfaction and escapism. Video game addiction is a real thing and, if I am to venture into this world, the ethics surrounding this, relatively new, discipline are yet to be fully discussed by creative and philosopher alike. Like cigarettes and alcohol, will video games eventually need addiction warning labels upon them?