Ready Player One

When will the 'real' and 'virtual' merge?  in 2045 says visionary inventor Ray Kurzweil.  He calls that transition the 'Singularity.'  What used to fit in a building now fits in your pocket, and what fits in your pocket today will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years.  By 2045 we'll have multiplied the human-machine civilization a billionfold.  We will gain power over our fates.  Our mortality will be in our own hands.  Many focus on what they perceive as a loss of some vital aspect of our humanity.  The essence of being human is not our limitations, it is our ability to reach beyond our limitations.  The 'Singularity' offers the hope of an artificial afterlife, but it could also lead to our own extinction.  War, global warming,  or disease could all do us in, but what if it's our own technology?  

Author Ernest Cline discusses his book "Ready Player Two," anticipating virtual reality and exploring both the perils and potentials of internet technology.

Read the Book or Watch the Movie.   What's the Difference?

Discussion Questions for Ready Player One

I Robot, I Media

Q. How can we ensure that our development as moral and social animals keeps pace with our rapidly evolving communications technology?

A. By playing an active role in our media consumption, trusting reporters who demonstrate fairness and reliability over time, offering corrections when they get something wrong, and when we care enough--reading the original documents they worked from.

What is the ‘Singularity?’

Has Mark Zuckerberg already started to create it? Would you want to live there? Why/not?

Four Dead In Ohio

54 years ago today, May 4 [1970] -- Four students at Kent State University in Ohio, two of them women, were shot to death by a volley of National Guard gunfire. At least 8 other students were wounded.  But why?

1) Who might Neil Young be referring to in the line “found her dead on the ground”?

2) What did students at Kent State think about the Vietnam war then?  What do they think now?

3) Do you think everyone agreed with Neil Young’s view of what occurred at Kent State? Why do you think “Ohio” might have also been a “touchstone of opposition” for people that supported the Vietnam War?

4) In what ways do you think the song “Ohio” might have been a more effective method of expressing shock and opposition than any journalism could have been? 

5) What comparisons can we make from the events of 50 years ago to what is happening on college campuses right now?  What have we learned from the past?