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?

Don't Panic

So long and thanks for all the fish...

Mere seconds before the Earth is to be demolished by an alien construction crew, journeyman Arthur Dent is swept off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, an alien researcher penning a new edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."  Do movie trailers appeal to our 'deep' or 'hyper' attention?

Douglas Adams cult classic may have been the stuff of Science Fiction in the 1970s, but one can't help compare his fictitious guide to existing modern-day technology.  Never before have we had access to so much information at our fingertips.  So why is it we seem to know so little?  

Isn't now the time to panic?

Chapter 11: Influencing Machine

Remember Jimmy Jet and his TV set?

How does TV affect our brain chemistry?

How has the Corona Pandemic affected recommendations on 'screen time?'  What are the 3 C's?

Can you put each of these innovations in the correct chronological order by numbering them from 1-18?

1) Which had the most impact on the way we get the news? The least? Explain.

2) Where Do you get most of your news from? Why?

3) What new technologies have changed media in your lifetime?  The future?

The Matrix In Me

You can see it when you look out your window...  when you turn on your television... when you go to work.  It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.  The truth that like everyone else you were born into a prison that you can not smell or taste or touch.  A prison for your mind.  More precisely the prison OF your mind.  

We think we know the difference between when we are being rational and when we are being impulsive, but what does research show? 

Implicit.harvard.edu


How do the outcomes of this test compare to similar tests on racial bias?

1) Which of these dolls is the 'good' one?  Why?

2) Which of these dolls is the bad one?  Why?

3) Which of these dolls looks most like you?

Can we learn to be less biased?

Who Do You Trust?

1) Who do you trust the most?  Friends? Family? Yourself?

2) What conclusions can we draw from this chart?  Who ranked high/ low?

3) When was this survey taken?  Have the numbers changed? Why/not?

4) Can polls and pollsters be trusted? Why/not?

5) Should we trust our first impressions about a person?

6) Who is the most trusted person in America? Do you agree?  Why/  not?

Full Disclosure

In Chapter 9 Brooke proposed that reporters aren't supposed to make the world better.

Their job is to tell us what is going on, so WE can make it better...

Would you trust them more if you knew more about them?

Video conferencing is pulling back the curtain on our private lives, as our friends  & colleagues finally get a peek into our homes. Correspondent Mo Rocca talks with designer Jonathan Adler, fashion commentator Simon Doonan, and New York Times critic-at-large Amanda Hess about what Zoom is divulging about us.

1) What can we learn about our reporters and celebrities by 'peeking' into their living rooms and offices?

2) Do you trust them more or less? Why?

3) What is in your 'Zoom' background and what does it 'disclose' about you?