You have to read Ready Player One (2011) by Ernest Cline!
I have a major soft spot for utopian and dystopian future societies and characters. Throw in immersive virtual reality, artificial intelligence, pervasive computing vision, haptic technologies, Japanese culture and I’m in virtual heaven.
Progress in technology is exponential and we’ll be able to merge with our technology within the next decade. No, no alien invasion.
Welcome to Ready Player One
In the dystopian 2044, a free-to-use virtual universe known as OASIS has become a daily refuge from the ugly real world and school systems are available online. When the creator, Halliday, dies without heirs, he leaves his $240 billion fortune and OASIS control to the finder of his Easter Egg.
To win, players have to unravel a series of riddles and video games which have been built around Halliday’s obsession of 80’s pop culture. We follow Wade Watt’s convolutions of his race towards the Egg in this highly entertaining, thrilling and addictive game within a novel.
As someone who often takes refuge from the real world by spending hours coding, reading and watching anime/movies, it wasn’t hard relating to Wade’s introvert nature and enjoying the vivid descriptions of OASIS and the characters involved.
Causatum of reading Ready Player One
It took me a few days to plough though the book, mainly starting before midnight through to the full sunrise. My body clock is upside down but damn was it worth the read.
Since finishing the book and going through countless reviews, it has given me a list of movies to see and list of books to read. It has also boosted my interest and motivation to get back into machine learning and computer vision.
After creating a mini web app, face-find-fun to detect, track and draw a party hat on your head with the webcam, I haven’t done anything CV-related. Any ideas?
I would like to go through the scikit-learn tutorials but it looks dry without an application in mind. Perhaps a selfie-detector -
Input: a bunch of positive images of yourself and negative images of your friends.
Output: Given an image, selfie-detector verifies it its you.
###Movies
Here is a list of movies referenced in the book and reviews.
(Schoolhouse Rock! is not a movie but it was a rocking educational game with videos that I played as a little girl)
- Blade Runner (1982) - RT 91%, IMDb 83%. Watched! V. Good!
- Brainstorm (1983) - RT 63%, IMDb 65%. Wont watch
- Brazil (1985) - RT 98%, imdb 80%. Will watch
- Explorers (1985) - RT 77%, IMDb 66%. Wont watch
- Highlander (1986) - RT 67%, IMDb 72%. Might watch
- Ladyhawke (1985) - RT 67%, IMDb 69%. Might watch
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) - RT 97%, IMDb 84%. Will watch
- Risky Business (1983) - RT 98%, IMDb 68%. Might watch
- Schoolhouse Rock!. Watched! Played! V. Good!
- Serenity (2005) - RT 82%, IMDb 81%. Will watch
- Short Circuit (1986) - RT 57%, IMDb 65%. Wont watch
- The Breakfast Club (1985) - RT 91%, IMDb 71%. Might watch
- The Dark Crystal (1982) - RT 71%, IMDb 72%. Might watch
- Silence of the Lambs (1991) - RT 94%, IMDb 86%. Will watch
- THX 1138 (1971) - RT 86%, IMDb 68%. Will watch
- Tron (1982) - RT 71%, IMDb 68%. Watched. V. Good!
- Vision Quest (1985) - RT 58%, IMDb 64%. Might watch
- WarGames (1983) - RT 92%, IMDb 71%. Will watch
- Weird Science (1985) - RT 56%, IMDb 66%. Wont watch
###Books