Ready Player One Analysis

The idea of technological dystopia, or Cyberpunk, is becoming increasingly realistic as we head into areas of artificial intelligence, easily portable electronics, and Virtual realities. Virtual realities have been a staple of the science fiction genre from Ender’s Game to The Matrix and more recently, Ready Player One.The Matrix, directed by the Wachowski sisters, was about robots with artificial intelligence enslaving the human race, trapping them in a virtual reality. Ready player one, written by Ernest Cline, chronicles a quest to gain control of a virtual reality. While The Matrix takes a darker, more cautionary approach to both virtual reality and artificial intelligence, Ready player one believes that humanity will eventually have to

In Ready Player One, Halladay’s quest causes everyone to focus on the 80’s as an overarching part of history and culture to the point there is no concept of “modern” culture. Not only do the quests influence the educational system, among others, they also only focus on Halladay’s version of the 80’s and nothing else. People, in one way or another, refuse to focus on change and digress into a society that no longer exists. In The Matrix, The computer simulates things like natural disasters, among other world events, and influence people to respond to them a certain way. The matrix controls the way that society progresses so that humanity feels like they are advancing but not enough so that they figure out the matrix is. In both Ready Player One and The Matrix, a majority of the people are mostly content with letting others choose their fate. Even though in The Matrix people don’t know they’re in a virtual reality, most of them don’t notice anything wrong nor do they try to seek out the real world. In Cypher’s case, he tries to go back because the real world is too much responsibility. In Ready Player One, nothing in the real world has pertinence because they all live by Halladay’s bible, even if they're not Gunters. In this way, the “real world” also has a tendency to push one group's opinions of the world and expect people to conform to

In the case of The Matrix, everyone is quite literally a slave to the machines. This is only reaffirmed by all the residents of The Matrix never questioning reality and taking everything at face value. The matrix can be seen as an allegory for the government and this can be seen as a commentary on mass media and politics and how most people are not willing to question either of those. The Sixers are also unknowingly slaves to the IOI despite all the money and luxury they are offered, they do not exist in the oasis nor are they allowed to exist as anything more than a tool for Sorrento to use. The other residents of the oasis are also inherently slaves to the oasis because they cannot exist in the real world as everything is done through a virtual reality. Besides food, water, clothing, and shelter; everything is conducted through the oasis thus leading the world to depend on the oasis so much that it can’t exist without it. Even though they believe they have freedom, it is nothing more than a delusion as the only choice they have is the