Ready Player Corona
A comparison of our real locked down COVID-19 epidemic hit the world with the Ready Player One dystopian world where virtualization and social distancing are normal. It’s just an imaginative thought, observation and completely my point of view.
We have seen many epidemics hit dystopian world illustrated in movies and books. In my quarantined day 10 staring at the limbo and thinking about everything under the sun session, I thought how true or real those worlds are described to our current real locked down COVID-19 epidemic hit world. I also just thought about how well we are really close to that future world. Surely there won’t be anything like zombies or that people are going to live in the container stacks or afraid of water or only living in the water and I’m pretty sure that it won’t happen in the near future too.
To start with, COVID-19 is not the first epidemic that spread globally. There are multiple epidemics which caused more death and infections around the world than this.
For example, Flu Pandemic of 1918 outbreak was estimated that more than 3rd of the world population was infected and the mortality rate was estimated at 10% to 20%, with up to 25 million deaths in the first 25 weeks alone
It affected and killed even the young healthy adults too. COVID-19 is not that much deadly and also our Health system is also not that bad. We had evolved from those epidemics. But it’s special in every other way in this information era.
This is the first statistically well-documented epidemic where the governments took good precautionary actions rather than just controlling the damages. Information and knowledge were spread globally in a fast manner rather than weeks or months to spread. In fact, the information about the Virus was reached every corner of the world even before the virus reached them. More than a third of the world population is under some form of restriction or quarantine or lockdown. Most of the countries have put some sort of restriction for the movement of people either by request or by the order. Because of this, the global economy will take a hit largely. Apparently it will also have some lasting ripple effect with the people culturally, economically and socially.
Dystopian World: Ready Player One
There are a lot of movies or book which has a story where the world has zombies or virus or aliens killing people. Most of those are far from happening. Few of them has the world which we could think that it would be possible in near future itself. One of such movie and book is the Ready Player One set against a dystopian world where entire fuel is depleted, people spend time logging and living virtually in the Open World Computer Game called OASIS. People don’t have any other choice than to live in their home and most of the work is done virtually. Due to the cost of fuel and bad air quality, in that world moving or traveling is considered as a luxury. I just want to compare that world to ours and also imagine some possible futuristic ones which we could have.
OASIS vs Earth
In Ready Player One, people will connect, socialize, play, enjoy and work virtually in the OASIS rather than real. In that, even the protagonist wants to live in the virtual world rather than in the real world. According to him, going outside is highly overrated. Due to social distancing and lockdown in effect, We are also in the same state. Right now going outside is highly dangerous and overrated. So people are using more video calls and conference calls to socialize. In due course, this could become a normal, used to it and people will try to innovate and use this for other activities too. People will be using the same sort for virtual events like Marriage and their social gatherings like community meetings or other meetings in their day to day activities. People will attend those events virtually from their comfort of the home. Already we have VR and AR experiences but more increase in adaptation will lead to innovate on its own. After a decade, people could be very much using a hologram.
Work from Home
In Ready Player One, most people always work from home and businesses are also conducted in the OASIS. Business and shops will have their own virtual head offices and shops in the virtual world. Due to this epidemic, the entire IT industry is in the work from home only. Every industry will start to implement the policy for that and try to steer towards the remote workforce. I’m not saying that this remote workforce happened entirely due to this epidemic. But this epidemic has changed or altered the way we work. After this, some industries like a call center or BPO will steer towards the entire remote workforce strategy for cost-cutting. Since the first step of experimenting has been done already, the industries which don’t have that remote workforce will also start adopting this type easily in a very large scale manner. Surely this won’t be applicable to the manufacturing industry. But the services industry can implement this easily.
Surveillance
In Ready Player One, Surveillance can be done by the way people are using the internet. Internet companies have the data to track people. Likewise, in this epidemic, people are willingly accepting the fact that they are needed to be tracked. They are applauding the Chinese surveillance system and its communist lockdown in a good way. Due to this, every government will increase the budget to track their people’s activities. Common people will also accept that the government needs to track its own people. Since the government has proved one good application, it will be easy for them to get approval from their people and also from their institution. I don’t know whether this is a good way or not, but this gonna be a very good precedent for the surveillance.
Virtual Classrooms
In Ready Player One, the protagonist will study in the virtual school rather than attending the real school. Right now, students all over the world are in the home trying to learn from there itself. If this situation prevails, the schools and students will be forced to study from their virtual classrooms itself. This is not something that is new. Already there is a big boom to this industry of virtual learning. But this virtual classroom is of high-end technology right now which will available to high class but eventually become available for common people. This epidemic is gonna be a catalyst for that. Teachers gonna enjoy this since they don’t have to worry about who is throwing papers or making chit chats or anything else. Like in the movie, the software can enforce this type of restrictions rather than teachers.
Virtual Stores
In Ready Player One, any player can go into the virtual store of food restaurants, virtual malls, and other outlets and you will be able to order from there. Things would be delivered to their address automatically. Already everyone in our world got used to e-commerce and it is becoming big than the real store outlets. This epidemic will make sure that it is one of the basic infrastructures for the retail chain store. E-commerce will also become a normal thing in the 2nd and 3rd tier cities and towns. E-commerce will also innovate the store experience, rather than a simple web app, people can go ahead and try that with them and then they can order. Just imagine you create an avatar exactly like you and you go and put a dress to it, try it out and then make a decision. This is gonna be the best window shopping experience ever.
To finish it off, I’m not saying that all these things will come true. Some of these are already implemented in our world. I’m just saying that this epidemic is gonna be a catalyst or increase the speed of innovation or adaptation of the particular technology especially the virtualization and surveillance. Actually its going to be a lot more effects of this COVID-19 epidemic in our economy and society.
Every world-changing or altering things happened because of the epidemics and world wars. Every bad thing happens also for a reason.
Its effects will ripple for until the next decade. I hope we won’t be stuck forever like the people in Axiom and we will get out of this mess pretty soon. If we stayed in our home for long then we will also forget how to walk. 😋
Stay Home, Stay Safe, Save the World!
