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Title: Ready Player One
Authors: Ernest Cline
Category:supplementals
Number of Highlights: 12
Date: 2025-02-09
Last Highlighted: **
Highlights
You know youâve totally screwed up your life when your whole world turns to shit and the only person you have to talk to is your system agent software.
âI created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didnât know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life. Right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, itâs also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real. Do you understand?â
As we continued to talk, going through the motions of getting to know each other, I realized that we already did know each other, as well as any two people could. Weâd known each other for years, in the most intimate way possible. Weâd connected on a purely mental level. I understood her, trusted her, and loved her as a dear friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation.
Tags:knowledge,perspective
Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a star. One of over a hundred billion stars in our galaxy. A galaxy that was just one of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe. This helped me keep things in perspective.
Youâd be amazed how much research you can get done when you have no life whatsoever. Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, is a lot of study time.
Tags:knowledge,study,work:life
The ability to mute my peers was one of my favorite things about attending school online, and I took advantage of it almost daily. The best thing about it was that they could see that youâd muted them, and they couldnât do a damn thing about it.
Tags:dystopian
But years later, Morrow wrote in his autobiography that heâd left GSS because âwe were no longer in the videogame business,â and because he felt that the OASIS had evolved into something horrible. âIt had become a self-imposed prison for humanity,â he wrote. âA pleasant place for the world to hide from its problems while human civilization slowly collapses, primarily due to neglect.â
Tags:perspective
Charging people for virtual fuel to power their virtual spaceships was one of the ways Gregarious Simulation Systems generated revenue, since accessing the OASIS was free. But GSSâs primary source of income came from teleportation fares. Teleportation was the fastest way to travel, but it was also the most expensive.
Tags:technology
It was also a lot easier for online teachers to hold their studentsâ attention, because here in the OASIS, the classrooms were like holodecks. Teachers could take their students on a virtual field trip every day, without ever leaving the school grounds.
My mom once told me that my dad had given me an alliterative name, Wade Watts, because he thought it sounded like the secret identity of a superhero. Like Peter Parker or Clark Kent. Knowing that made me think he must have been a cool guy, despite how heâd died.
The moment IOI took it over, the OASIS would cease to be the open-source virtual utopia Iâd grown up in. It would become a corporate-run dystopia, an overpriced theme park for wealthy elitists.
Tags:technology
âJim always wanted everyone to share his obsessions, to love the same things he loved. I think this contest is his way of giving the entire world an incentive to do just that.â