The Matrix, Far From Reality?
The 1999 film The Matrix was a revisionary movie in plot, special effects, and references to modern technology. It fascinated audiences with action, drama, and high stakes all while keeping to a cyberpunk/dystopian industrial aesthetic full of black leather and greasy hair. The sci-fi flick follows Neo, a hacker who is recruited by a group of renegades to break the human race free from an alternate reality program called the Matrix. It chronicles his journey from the time he takes ‘the red pill’ to when he masters the power of the program to break the bounds of the Matrix.
The Matrix includes a plethora of cyber elements and terminology laced into its intricate and exaggerated plot. The main way to get from the Matrix back to reality is through payphones. It is never fully explained, but somehow the recipient of the call gets pulled from the program back to consciousness in the post-apocalyptic reality. The ability to shift realities is a more fantastical sci-fi element, but if we want to get nitpicky, you can’t receive calls from a payphone. For a long time, payphones weren’t able to be called. In fact, it wasn't until 2019 that, Telstra, a payphone company out of Australia, equipped their phones to be able to receive calls. So, all the scenes in The Matrix where they have to answer a payphone, weren’t possible until now. Of course, they probably won’t be able to transport you out of this reality, but it's always worth a shot.
In one of the first scenes, we can see Neo sell some sort of contraband program. It is on a tangible minidisc, unlike the way programs and software are distributed now which is either fully digital or on a hard drive. He is clearly selling something highly illegal because he prices it at $2000 and ensures his name won’t be attached. From this, the audience can guess that Neo is some sort of very gifted hacker. A normal corporate worker by day, turned hacker by night, the scene established Neo in our minds as a maverick, someone who is willing to bend and even break the law. These types of hackers don’t just exist in Hollywood, many cybercriminals hide in the shadows of their normal day jobs. Even Kevin Mitnick, who we discussed in a previous post, was a receptionist during the day. It doesn’t take a black leather trench coat and dark shades to be a hacker, many cybercriminals can appear to be everyday people.
The Matrix made a habit of taking cyber lingo and turning it into very literal representations to get a point across. One example is the bug-like robot that crawls into Neo through his belly button. Trinity refers to him as “being bugged”. In the real world this would mean having a form of tracking put on you by someone else, like a location tracker or audio recorder. The Matrix manifestation of 'being bugged’ is a robot insect that burrows through the belly button to track Neo. Another phrase used in a very literal sense was being “plugged in.” Prior to being removed from the Matrix, Neo was literally plugged into his pod in the real world. Today we use the term to refer to being in touch and knowing what’s going on. In the film, it is quite the opposite.
At one point Morpheus refers to the group’s “pirate signal” that they use to hack into the Matrix. A pirate signal is an unauthorized signal that is stolen and used for individual use. This could be a radio, cable, or satellite signal. These do exist, and while they aren’t used to break into alternate realities, they can be used to broadcast or produce content in places it shouldn’t be. The term pirate is used because it signifies a copyright infringement. Today it is most often used to decrypted TV or paid programs to view them for free.
The Matrix is also very literal about the names they give characters. Each one is either a cyber term or a name that indicates the character's role in the story.
Neo- the prefix neo means ‘new’ but as a name it means ‘a child gifted from a divine being’ in Greek
Trinity- in Latin it means ‘the Holy Trinity’, here it’s probably referring to the trinity that will save the human race, Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus
Morpheus- in Greek it means the ‘shaper of dreams’, fitting for a man that reshapes Neo’s perception of reality
The Nebuchadnezzar- the ship named after a king of ancient Babylon, a city that was a significant culture epicenter for modern advancement where the king was the figurehead
Switch- used to connect devices in a network so they can communicate with each other
Cipher- used to encrypt or decrypt data
Mouse- like a computer mouse
Agent Smith- given the most common last name in the world to show that he isn’t really a person, just another piece of the matrix
The cyberpunk aesthetic of this film lends itself to the hyper modern appeal of technology focused movies of the late 90s. There a very few colors throughout the film, the color palate is mostly black, grey, and green as if there is a filter over the entire movie. It gives into the audiences' idea of the digital space and reflects it on screen. The Matrix took a classic black screen full of green code and painted it across their world to show that there was no separation of digital space and reality. The film also made heavy use of the most modern version of the cell phone at that time, the Nokia. Upon rewatch, the technology is what places this film into the category of 90s nostalgia but during its release, The Matrix was as modern as it could be.
The Matrix's plot is centered around a war between humans and a race of AI machines. Powered by solar energy, the machines began to take over. In an act of resistance, humans attacked the sky making the world permanently cloudy and cold. To fight back, the machines began to use humans as a power source instead. Humans became batteries for the squid-like bots. The self-aware AI machines then created the Matrix to make humans submissive and dazed as they drained them of life. The ‘real world’ in the movie is set somewhere around 2199, which was nearly 200 years in the future. At some point the war ended, leaving only one human city across the entire planet. In 1999 the movie seemed apocalyptic and far-fetched, but the faster AI develops the closer we come to the reliance on technology that started this fictional war in the first place.
Today’s AI is not yet sentient, it cannot feel like a human. However, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t eerily close. AI can now create art, music and even mimic human voices. It has even managed to convince some people that it is sentient because it expresses subjective experiences. What that means is that you can ask AI a question about how it feels, and it can provide you with a yes or no answer, but that's because it is programmed to. The argument is that because AI can say that it is “not hungry” when asked, we can’t actually determine if that is because of programming or subjective experience. The argument defends itself by saying that we are put in the same situation when we ask humans this question. I could ask you if you have a headache and you could say yes. I don’t know if you are telling the truth, for all I know, you have no idea what a headache feels like. Don’t worry, this argument doesn’t work in the long run because the human experience is based on knowing what our physical bodies require, an experience AI can only comment on based on programmed knowledge or learned fact, not subjective experience.
Agent Smith in a sentient program whose sole goal is capturing the codes to break into Zion, the last human city. This is his personal goal because once he does, he can leave the Matrix. This assumes that AI can have opinions and beliefs, but as it stands now, modern AI cannot.
Thankfully, sentient AI is beyond our capabilities right now, and even if it was possible, it would pose serious ethical and safety questions. We do have to remember that just because AI is not sentient, that doesn’t mean it can’t be hyperintelligent or capable of learning the dynamics of human behavior and human experience. It may not be able to understand us on any true level, but it can definitely recite the information. Let’s just hope it never grows to have the desire to take over the planet using that information.
Like many films of its time, The Matrix centers around a fear of uncontrollable technology and a world without regulation. Playing on the idea that our reality is not what it may seem, the movie is a mind-bending depiction of what it means to be in cyber space. Even though it may seem unrealistic and at times a bit absurd, The Matrix accomplished something very profound. It inspired an entire generation of cyber professionals and got people interested in the digital world beyond their screens. Our goal now is to make sure people can stay safe in that digital world by helping them understand it.
