The Matrix, too far from the truth?
Created | Updated Mar 28, 2002
It reminded me of a thought process I had several years ago, since they only really occur once in a blue moon it wasn't really very difficult to remember it. BTW this is the point at which, if you haven't seen the movie then stop reading now since most if the idea behing it all will be revealed, well some of it, well probably not a lot.
One day whilst playing one of those mindless 3D shootemups, blam, blam, kill, maime oh my God I must now go out and kill somebody for real because all of a sudden my grip on reality has been loosened just enough to make me pick up a gun, point it at a living human being and pull the trigger type games, I wondered if at all in the future there would be a game that just plugged into my head and took me into the realm of 0's and 1's to the point where I couldn't distinguish it from reality apart from a small red button located in my left arm pit which I could hit to exit the game (probably labeled "Don't Panic").
It was at this point that I considered the human brain, much like the analysis in the film. It does indeed simply act and react to and from electrical signals which of course is exactly what computers do. Forgetting for a moment about the biological side of things such as hormones, something which the male population of the planet could well do with having reduced or forgotten about completely (an yes I am male), it is therefore possible, in theory, to replicate the electrical signals that the brain has to deal with.
Although there is a much darker overtone to the film's plot my theory was far simpler. Humans being the naturally lethargic creatures that they are like to make things simpler for themselves. Everything today is about automation, from electric kettles to factory machinery.
Now take a look at the digital office. We have computers that will listen to us and type what we say, I suppose though that out of all the things on the planet they are probably most apt to deal with the situation (apart from politicians who are also just as likely to sit and listen as long as you keep on using them, although they are less likely to do what you want), although I am beginning to believe that the continual problems we have with them are nothing to do with the fact that the hardware has gone wrong or the configuration is incorrect, but rather that they are just bored dealing with us and prefer suicide to continuing being our slave for another second. I mean, computers today are a large magnitude more powerful than those which aided man to land on the moon (if you believe that happened), and what do we do with them? Type a few letters here, send a few emails there. In the amount of time it has taken me to write this so far, my computer could have probably finished writing a 200,000 page report on why monkeys haven't actually written Shakespeares' novels by now.
But the digital office looms ever nearer, will it ever reach the point where you have a digital filing cabinet? No longer do you go to work, but you get up in the morning and plug yourself in, if you're late then it's not because the bus broke down but the routing via GlobalComms satellite was slightly below a terabyte.
Whilst in your digital office you have a projection of your body with which to do the work, you get up from your digital desk and go over to the digital filing cabinet to get the digital purchase orders that you should have sent out yesterday but couldn't because the digital fax machine had gone down.
And then, all of a sudden, technology progresses and you find that you no longer have to go out because the digital pub version 1.0 has just been released so you rush down to the digital shop to get it. Why that door on the shop is always stiff I'll never know, I wish they'd hurry up and get a service patch out for it.
Spending more time in the "new" world means that the body needs automated machinery that can look after it whilst you're away at the office or in the Seychelles. Yet again more time passes, less spent in the physical world, and all of a sudden you find you actually have no need to go back, every person in the world is networked in this false reality.
Babies are quickly connected at birth so that you can hire a nanny to look after them and people die young so that they can go and look after the mainframe running all of this.
Of course after a few generations, people forget that they are in a virtual environment because they don't ever have to remember.
And so we have "The Matrix".
This is not our prison rather our forefathers (and foremothers, or should that be forepersons) choice. When you're in that dreamy state where you feel like you're about to awake, remember, there's some little droid with a hypodermic, making sure you don't get too much of a glimpse of your environment pod.
If asked what the moral of the story is, then I couldn't say, we live wherever we do and that's the way it is. Live it, and enjoy it for what it is, oh... and ban those damned automated typewriters.
One day whilst playing one of those mindless 3D shootemups, blam, blam, kill, maime oh my God I must now go out and kill somebody for real because all of a sudden my grip on reality has been loosened just enough to make me pick up a gun, point it at a living human being and pull the trigger type games, I wondered if at all in the future there would be a game that just plugged into my head and took me into the realm of 0's and 1's to the point where I couldn't distinguish it from reality apart from a small red button located in my left arm pit which I could hit to exit the game (probably labeled "Don't Panic").
It was at this point that I considered the human brain, much like the analysis in the film. It does indeed simply act and react to and from electrical signals which of course is exactly what computers do. Forgetting for a moment about the biological side of things such as hormones, something which the male population of the planet could well do with having reduced or forgotten about completely (an yes I am male), it is therefore possible, in theory, to replicate the electrical signals that the brain has to deal with.
Although there is a much darker overtone to the film's plot my theory was far simpler. Humans being the naturally lethargic creatures that they are like to make things simpler for themselves. Everything today is about automation, from electric kettles to factory machinery.
Now take a look at the digital office. We have computers that will listen to us and type what we say, I suppose though that out of all the things on the planet they are probably most apt to deal with the situation (apart from politicians who are also just as likely to sit and listen as long as you keep on using them, although they are less likely to do what you want), although I am beginning to believe that the continual problems we have with them are nothing to do with the fact that the hardware has gone wrong or the configuration is incorrect, but rather that they are just bored dealing with us and prefer suicide to continuing being our slave for another second. I mean, computers today are a large magnitude more powerful than those which aided man to land on the moon (if you believe that happened), and what do we do with them? Type a few letters here, send a few emails there. In the amount of time it has taken me to write this so far, my computer could have probably finished writing a 200,000 page report on why monkeys haven't actually written Shakespeares' novels by now.
But the digital office looms ever nearer, will it ever reach the point where you have a digital filing cabinet? No longer do you go to work, but you get up in the morning and plug yourself in, if you're late then it's not because the bus broke down but the routing via GlobalComms satellite was slightly below a terabyte.
Whilst in your digital office you have a projection of your body with which to do the work, you get up from your digital desk and go over to the digital filing cabinet to get the digital purchase orders that you should have sent out yesterday but couldn't because the digital fax machine had gone down.
And then, all of a sudden, technology progresses and you find that you no longer have to go out because the digital pub version 1.0 has just been released so you rush down to the digital shop to get it. Why that door on the shop is always stiff I'll never know, I wish they'd hurry up and get a service patch out for it.
Spending more time in the "new" world means that the body needs automated machinery that can look after it whilst you're away at the office or in the Seychelles. Yet again more time passes, less spent in the physical world, and all of a sudden you find you actually have no need to go back, every person in the world is networked in this false reality.
Babies are quickly connected at birth so that you can hire a nanny to look after them and people die young so that they can go and look after the mainframe running all of this.
Of course after a few generations, people forget that they are in a virtual environment because they don't ever have to remember.
And so we have "The Matrix".
This is not our prison rather our forefathers (and foremothers, or should that be forepersons) choice. When you're in that dreamy state where you feel like you're about to awake, remember, there's some little droid with a hypodermic, making sure you don't get too much of a glimpse of your environment pod.
If asked what the moral of the story is, then I couldn't say, we live wherever we do and that's the way it is. Live it, and enjoy it for what it is, oh... and ban those damned automated typewriters.
