![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Matrix
Sep. 6th, 2015 12:46 pmI still know people who don't really understand "the Matrix" by the Wachowski brothers. So I'm going to go through a fairly minimalist explanation. It's not necessary to include the last two movies of the trilogy for this understanding - indeed, it would over-complicate the relatively simple premises.
In The Matrix, there are two worlds.
The first world is a post-apocalyptic desert - we don't know the year, but this is in fact the "real world." The history, as we're presented with, is that at some point during the 21st century or beyond, artificial intelligence was produced that surpassed human capability (essentially the singularity.) This artificial intelligence perceived humanity as a threat, and started a war (one can draw likeness to the Terminator series, except in this alternate universe, the machines win.) The humans "scorched the sky" as Morpheus tells us, and they likely accomplished this either by nuclear holocaust, or some esoteric technology as of yet developed - the humans destroyed the sky because the machines powered themselves by solar radiation, and in doing so, made the planet's surface unsustainable for human life. However, the machines found another source of power - human thermo-electric energy. They created "farms" of humans and harvested their energies throughout their lifespans. The remaining humans went far underground and founded Zion - the last refuge of humans who have not been a part of the Matrix.
The second world is "the Matrix." It is a computer-generated 21st century reality that mimics the entire earth (we have to also assume that it mimics space as well, because the time period includes the International Space Station as well as numerous probes launched into deep space.) The Matrix is where the minds of the humans plugged into the farms live out their lives, completely oblivious to their real existence - that of a power plant. Inside the Matrix itself, the main character Neo resides, until he meets Morpheus and Trinity, who free him. He is ejected from "the Matrix" and awakes in his real body, plugged into a human farm - when the machines realize this, they flush him into the sewers, where without Morpheus and his electromagnetic ship, Neo would have surely died. The second world (the Matrix) is primarily human inhabited, with the exception of the "agents" whom act as machine arbiters. They can possess any human plugged directly into the matrix at any time, and can perform feats well beyond the scope of any human, as they can access the code of the Matrix directly. They concern themselves primarily with destroying individuals who access the matrix in an unauthorized fashion. In later movies, we can extrapolate that they are also likely involved with hunting down rogue programs - machine programs who reside in the Matrix, but who act with their own intention, rather than that of the machine collective.
I think what confuses many people is that the movie tends to move seamlessly between the worlds. Anyone who exists in the real world, disconnected from the Matrix, is capable of re-entering the matrix (as long as they were not born in Zion, as they then do not have the mechanical implants necessary to do so.) The electromagnetic ships have wireless technology capable of transmitting a signal, and individuals plug themselves in to be transmitted. Their consciousness ceases to exist in the first, real world at that point, and instead exists in the second world, the matrix (or a ship-simulated program, as Neo and Morpheus experience) through wireless transmission.
These basic premises are fairly rock-solid, but of course they open up holes in reasoning as basically any fiction story does.
For instance, would human farms really generate enough power to operate all of the machine systems, as well as perfectly simulating a 21st century world (and possibly the entire universe?)
If the machines were super-intelligent (and they obviously are) why wouldn't they just leave the planet? Surely they could produce hydrogen fuel and build a spaceship if they can create such a complicated simulation.
Taking the entire trilogy as a whole, we know that the Matrix has had multiple incarnations - that is, there has been more than one Neo, and the script that plays out for us on screen has taken place many times before, with slight variations. This leaves us wondering just how many years have actually passed, how many Zions there have actually been, and especially why the machines haven't figured out a way off of the planet by now. Not only this, but in the final movie, we know that beyond the clouds, the sun still shines into the atmosphere. The machines could have simply built up, beyond the cloud-cover, and avoided every having to make human farms - allowing them to completely exterminate humans all-together.
In The Matrix, there are two worlds.
The first world is a post-apocalyptic desert - we don't know the year, but this is in fact the "real world." The history, as we're presented with, is that at some point during the 21st century or beyond, artificial intelligence was produced that surpassed human capability (essentially the singularity.) This artificial intelligence perceived humanity as a threat, and started a war (one can draw likeness to the Terminator series, except in this alternate universe, the machines win.) The humans "scorched the sky" as Morpheus tells us, and they likely accomplished this either by nuclear holocaust, or some esoteric technology as of yet developed - the humans destroyed the sky because the machines powered themselves by solar radiation, and in doing so, made the planet's surface unsustainable for human life. However, the machines found another source of power - human thermo-electric energy. They created "farms" of humans and harvested their energies throughout their lifespans. The remaining humans went far underground and founded Zion - the last refuge of humans who have not been a part of the Matrix.
The second world is "the Matrix." It is a computer-generated 21st century reality that mimics the entire earth (we have to also assume that it mimics space as well, because the time period includes the International Space Station as well as numerous probes launched into deep space.) The Matrix is where the minds of the humans plugged into the farms live out their lives, completely oblivious to their real existence - that of a power plant. Inside the Matrix itself, the main character Neo resides, until he meets Morpheus and Trinity, who free him. He is ejected from "the Matrix" and awakes in his real body, plugged into a human farm - when the machines realize this, they flush him into the sewers, where without Morpheus and his electromagnetic ship, Neo would have surely died. The second world (the Matrix) is primarily human inhabited, with the exception of the "agents" whom act as machine arbiters. They can possess any human plugged directly into the matrix at any time, and can perform feats well beyond the scope of any human, as they can access the code of the Matrix directly. They concern themselves primarily with destroying individuals who access the matrix in an unauthorized fashion. In later movies, we can extrapolate that they are also likely involved with hunting down rogue programs - machine programs who reside in the Matrix, but who act with their own intention, rather than that of the machine collective.
I think what confuses many people is that the movie tends to move seamlessly between the worlds. Anyone who exists in the real world, disconnected from the Matrix, is capable of re-entering the matrix (as long as they were not born in Zion, as they then do not have the mechanical implants necessary to do so.) The electromagnetic ships have wireless technology capable of transmitting a signal, and individuals plug themselves in to be transmitted. Their consciousness ceases to exist in the first, real world at that point, and instead exists in the second world, the matrix (or a ship-simulated program, as Neo and Morpheus experience) through wireless transmission.
These basic premises are fairly rock-solid, but of course they open up holes in reasoning as basically any fiction story does.
For instance, would human farms really generate enough power to operate all of the machine systems, as well as perfectly simulating a 21st century world (and possibly the entire universe?)
If the machines were super-intelligent (and they obviously are) why wouldn't they just leave the planet? Surely they could produce hydrogen fuel and build a spaceship if they can create such a complicated simulation.
Taking the entire trilogy as a whole, we know that the Matrix has had multiple incarnations - that is, there has been more than one Neo, and the script that plays out for us on screen has taken place many times before, with slight variations. This leaves us wondering just how many years have actually passed, how many Zions there have actually been, and especially why the machines haven't figured out a way off of the planet by now. Not only this, but in the final movie, we know that beyond the clouds, the sun still shines into the atmosphere. The machines could have simply built up, beyond the cloud-cover, and avoided every having to make human farms - allowing them to completely exterminate humans all-together.
