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Daily link icon Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Ways the back story to The Matrix could have been better

One of the most annoying things about The Matrix is that they supposedly use people as an energy source. First of all, heat is a very inefficient source of energy, and for them to get more energy out of the heat generated by people's bodies than they have to expend in keeping people alive violates the laws of thermodynamics. It's just silly. It doesn't mean that The Matrix is a bad movie. Anyone who reads my site knows how damn much I have my hopes up that The Matrix Reloaded will be the best f'ing movie ever made (I know, I'll be let down). But I think the back story to The Matrix could have been better in two ways.

First, rather than using us for heat, it seems a neater idea would have been to harness our brains' spare processing power and use humanity as a massively parallel neural network-based supercomputer. Even to the advanced computers of the Matrix, the human brain would be recognized as the best "computer" ever designed. This would also sort of lend credibility to the premise of Neo's superpowers - that he harnessed the latent power in his brain and was able to move faster than the agents, etc.

Second, and I think this would have potentially been a much more fascinating premise, could have been that while we built the machines to work for us and make our lives better, the machines wound up deciding that they could make our lives better for us than we could ever do ourselves. So, for our own good they decided to enslave us. This seems to even fit better with Agent Smith's revelation that they tried to create a utopia for us, but we rejected it.

I really like C.S. Lewis's quote:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

I think it'd be so fitting if the machines enslaved us, not for their own purposes, but for our own good. What other cultural analogs would that have?

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Comments XML gif

nick wrote:

They do not use heat, they use electricity. They are A.i.s intelligent robots, who can think of themselves. Let me tell u matrix is not just a movie, there are some details i know about it. The whole movie is based on philosophy and religion, letme tell the reasons why... u the maker better read this...

At the beggining neo's apartment no. is room 101, the room of ignorance. Trinity represents the holy ghost, father and son. When Neo dies, trinity kisses him at that exact moment he wakes up, as the holy ghost give a kiss of life to someone. Neo is dead for 72 secs when he was shot, before he wakes up, like when jesus was dead for 72 hours before he woke up. e-mail me of what u think of my words. ( :

ps im trying not to be offensive

∴ nick | 25-Sep-2003 10:32am est | #2986

130.70.146.84 wrote:

Nick is nuts. Nuts I tell you!

∴ 130.70.146.84 | 6-Nov-2003 10:35am est | #3202

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