On April 1, I took my two teenaged boys and my wife to see the new Steven Spielberg movie, “Ready Player One” (RPO). This is not a review of the movie (incidentally, I found it entertaining), but a discussion of the world the movie portrays. A world I believe we are, to some extent, already living in, but definitely a world that is not too far off. My boys and I read the book by Ernest Cline before we went and saw the movie. My sixteen-year-old even made a playlist on Spotify of the 80’s songs referenced in the book. We were fully invested in seeing the movie, to say the least. After reading the book, I started pondering what a world depicted in the book would mean for our children and their lives. I concluded there were some very impactful consequences of an RPO world that were never addressed in the book, and frankly, not fully in the movie either. Although, a very hamfisted attempt was made in the last 5 minutes. If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, here is a short spoiler-free summary of the movie provided by the movie’s studio:

“The film is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday. When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. When an unlikely young hero named Wade Watts decides to join the contest, he is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical universe of mystery, discovery, and danger.” In a nutshell, it’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory storyline crammed into a multi-player game virtual world.

In the movie, living your life in the virtual world, known as the OASIS, is preferable to living in the real world. This premise is laid out in the fi ...