Do you look forward to the future? All the new and improved technology, video games, and flying cars. Well, in the book Ready Player One, written by Ernest Cline, his depiction of the future is a more negative one.
One reason the future’s depiction is portrayed bad in the story, is because most of the population live most of their lives in a virtual reality called the OASIS. The reason it's a bad thing is because then people are living in a fantasy and forgetting about their own reality. They start to forget to look after themselves. For example, the protagonist, Wade Watts is one teenager who spent most of his life inside the OASIS and is overweight. In the book it says, “I'd attended school in the real world up until the sixth grade. It hadn't been a very pleasant experience. I was painfully shy, awkward kid, with low self-esteem and almost no social skills-a side effect of spending most of my childhood inside the OASIS.” (Cline 30). This shows that because Wade spent most of his life in a virtual reality he is anti social and overweight from not working out or being outside. Also, at the very end Halliday tells Wade, “Don't make the same mistake I did. Don't hide in here forever.” (Cline 364). This shows that Halliday also realized that hiding in the OASIS all his life made him miss out on reality, and true
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For example, world hunger, poverty, and climate change. Wade says, “Also it turns out that burning all of those fossil fuels had some nasty side effects, like raising the temperature of our planet and screwing up the environment… Plants and animals are dying off in record numbers, and lots of people are starving and homeless.” (Cline 17). This shows that the world’s problems have caught up to them in 2045 and the way the world has dealt with it, is by going into an alternate reality. This is another reason why the future is depicted bad in the
Wade Watts is a geeky orphan who whose determination may shift depending on the situation. Wade started out living in his aunt's trailer at the Stacks, with very little money and his only access to OASIS was on a school-issued laptop. He then learned of the hunt for Halliday’s egg, a hunt which the winner would receive the late James Halliday’s fortune and unlimited power in OASIS. Wade becomes obsessed with the hunt and abandons school altogether trying to win. Yet, this is not the only sidetrack he faces. In Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, Wade’s main adversity and how he overcomes it shows that no matter how much you get distracted if you have the drive you can pull yourself back together.
Once the author made his view clear, he goes on to display possible scenarios of how human existence can change within the next millennium. He proposed four possible scenarios. The first scenario that Nash discusses, the “wasteland scenario” depicts
Scranton believes that human beings are killing present life by ignoring the effects of global warming on the world. He continues to warn the reader that change is coming regardless of what people do now and that they human race must prepare for what is inevitably coming, as it will be the collapse of global civilization as it is known. Scranton states that this time we are living in, the anthropocene, presents humans with multiple challenges but mostly, “what it means to be human” (page 234). How to control the inevitable
Throughout the novel, "Player One”, one of the main themes Coupland emphasis on is, “What is to Become of Us”. Coupland emphasis and brings light on to the fact that in the future there is no sense of “I”, there will only be an “Us”. Coupland very strategically uses words like, “become” to underline the future and how it will bring changes on identity. The relationship that exists between technology and humans has moved on from being an extension, and
The futuristic setting is the author's way of saying that the future will be depressing if humans fail to recognize and appreciate literature. The world is doomed because all these people want to do is sit in front of wall televisions and be entertained. Another example, Ender and Peter play buggers and astronauts, which simulates the real war that is taking place. "When kids played in the corridors, whole troops of them, the buggers never won, and sometimes the games got mean." (p. 11) When Peter and Ender simulate the war, they are telling the reader that even children are aware of the terrible war. The author shows his message of a terrible future here through the everyday activities of children being affected by the events that are far from home. Lastly, Montag's wife tries to kill herself by taking an entire bottle of sleeping pills and some emergency workers come; they just go about their business like her suicidal tendencies are nothing.
According to the World Bank’s report, climatologists predict greenhouse gases will cause temperatures to rise 7.2 degrees before the next century (par. 8). While the rise in temperature might seem trivial, Scranton elaborates on the detrimental effects this change would cause by quoting James Clapper. Mr. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, argues that extreme weather disasters will “increasingly disrupt food and energy markets, exacerbating state weakness, forcing human migrations, and triggering riots, civil disobedience, and vandalism” (par. 7). Dr. Scranton mentions these sources in order to convince the audience that an increase of only a few degrees can have a devastating impact that will inevitably leave the planet radically different during this epoch; the current epoch we live in, named the Anthropocene, is a term invented by geologist and scientists for the epoch that is “characterized by the arrival of the human species as a geological force” (par. 10). The name of the epoch inspired Scranton to title the article “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene” since it reaffirms his claim that we must accept that the future will not be the same as the present. Furthermore, Scranton includes a book in his article written by geophysicist David Archer incase readers remain skeptical of the scientific evidence with
One way this type of problem my arise is with “wide up-and-down fluctuations.” Diamond addresses the problems from global warming because for years after it had started, people noticed little change. The earth’s climate naturally fluctuates: “It is difficult to recognize that this year is worse than last year, and each successive year is only slightly worse than the year before, so that one’s baseline standard for what constitutes ‘normalcy’ shifts only gradually and almost imperceptibly.” A common saying is ‘seeing is believing’ without a quick and drastic change; it takes years for even climatologists to recognize the approaching problem. With almost all of the warning signs hidden, failing to anticipate is incredibly easy. I believe that this is one of Diamond’s more persuasive examples, unlike some of the other issues outlined within the text, global warming is something that affects all societies and is impossible to
Despite the increasing amount of scientific evidence that support global climate change, many countries still use fossil fuels. The U.S. in particular is considering the revitalization of the coal industry instead of focusing on the production of clean energy. This inability to change will eventually lead to our downfall and our world will become like that of Lauren’s. In order for our survival, we have to seek out other planets because we are not changing fast enough for the sake of our planet. As our world’s climate continues to change rapidly, our resources are running and we are starting to split the world’s population into two groups: the wealthy and the poor. This is a sign that our world might become like that of Lauren’s dystopia. We cannot continue to live in this world with the belief that there is a world after death, like Lauren says, “We'll adapt. We'll have to. God is Change” (Butler, 147). We, human race, have to adapt and change or else we will eventually disappear. There is no supernatural being that can save us from our own destruction because the human race refuses to change. Even if we manage to move another planet, we will eventually turn that planet into another hell. The problem is not with the world, it is with
The future is shrouded with multitude of mysteries which humanity is not able to precisely discern; however, predictions or depictions of this concealed future can be very effective in highlighting a problem which the future may hold. Author Ray Bradbury seemed to have had this in mind, writing Fahrenheit 451 in 1953 for the very purpose of cautioning the novel’s readers not to create a future resembling the one in the book: a dystopia set in the distant future in which books are censored and book owners’ possessions, burnt. Here, the society’s people are consumed by the new, futuristic (from the perspective of a man writing in the 1950s) technology which provided entertainment provoking little thought, such as television watching, thereby
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is a novel set in the year 2045 where almost everyone engages in a virtual reality called the OASIS. Cline’s novel published in 2011 can be compared to The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins and the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth. Collins’ first book was published in 2008 and Roth’s published in 2011. These three novels written and published during the same time period share many similar ideas and concerns of our culture. The appalling future society, the budding romance, the teenage protagonist are all found in novels like Cline’s. A Cultural Criticism of Ready Player One examines the similarities it shares with other dystopian novels of the twenty-first century and possibilities as to why the genre has been thriving.
In its place we are entering a period of consequences." According to the facts that were mentioned by Al Gore in the film, I believe we are already living in the period of consequences. He said “carbon dioxide have never gone above 300 PPM,” but according to NOAA most recent global monthly mean of CO2 in September 2015 was 397.08 PPM. Due to such climate change, most recently the world has experienced most severe natural disasters, even in places where normally such disasters are not expected and abnormal. Also, in the last quarter century 30 new diseases were emerged even deadly like Ebola. “We don 't have that luxury anymore. We didn 't ask for it, but here it is” (Al Gore). We don’t neither do animals. A scientific study shows that polar bears are drowning in the Arctic Ocean and that has never happened before. Due to swimming long distances, up to 60 miles, and without finding the ice that they depend on for resting, they
The pressure of society is like the pressure applied to pop a balloon. Society pushes people to the point where they will eventually explode. In Cline’s Ready Player One and Huxley’s Brave New World, Wade and John struggle with conforming into society. The society in the OASIS separates people from the real world, encouraging them to spend their lives in a virtual game; people basically live in a virtual world and forget about their personal needs in the real world. The citizens of the new world abide by the caste system to keep peace because they are brainwashed and do not know any better. In order to ignore society’s pressure, Wade puts aside IOI’s death threat, John stays true to his opinions after visiting the new world, and they both reject
These are conflict, poverty, instability, migration, unrest, collapse, capacity, and dependency. This film serves as a wakeup call to the audience because climate change is a very critical problem that people should address as soon as possible. It also explicitly shows that climate change is in fact in our midst and is not just a myth or a theory as some would say.
Ready Player One is a dystopian novel, and as such, takes places in the futuristic setting of the year 2044, with the entire world held in the clutches of many global, economic,
... middle of paper ... ... One of the most talked about subjects in the future is climate. At this very moment, the Earth is warming up and we are the cause.