7/31/2009

The Matrix: Science-fiction

and the theory of knowledge

Lecture for Science, Technology and

Society

R.S. David

The Matrix, the movie

• 1999 production of Larry and Andy
Wachowski
• Trilogy: The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded,
The Matrix Revolution
• Mix of cyberscience, artificial intelligence,
Buddhism, martial arts, romance and
heroism in cyberspace.
• Matrixism: a cult

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Synopsis
• Thomas A. Anderson aka “Neo”
• Meeting Trinity and Morpheus
• The quest to break The Matrix
• What is the Matrix?
• (Film clip from the Matrix) “Welcome to the
real world.”

Synopsis
• Neo takes the red pill, a tracer program, that
locates and re-connects his consciousness to
his body.
• It is 2199. Intelligent machines have taken over
the world.
• Human beings are raised in farms, where their
body heat is harvested to form the energy
needed by the machines.
• Humans are kept docile by a computer program
that has trapped their consciousness in an
illusory world.

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Synopsis
• Neo is chosen (The One) to lead the rebellion
against the regime of machines, and to free
humankind from enslavement.
• But he and Morpheus’ group are relentlessly
hunted down by the machines’ Agents, computer
programs that can lodge themselves in the
consciousness of humans.
• Morpheus’ mission involves penetrating and
breaking out of The Matrix -- the illusory world
created by the machines. This means smashing
the operating program that runs The Matrix –
before the intelligent machines kill them all.

Why the movie was successful

• Stunning visual effects – e.g. slowed bullet time.
• The movie plays on two classic human fears:
• (1) the fear of losing one’s mind – cognitive
breakdown or the inability to tell the difference
between illusion and reality
• (2) The fear of losing control over one’s life, of
being imprisoned or enslaved by a power
beyond one’s reach.

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Examples of cognitive breakdown

or malfunction
• Neo is told that the world he has taken for granted as the
real world is nothing but an illusory dream world conjured
by a computer program.
• Schizophrenia, e.g. in the book/movie “A beautiful mind”
(the story of Nobel laureate John Forbes Nash) where
imaginary situations and characters appear so real to
Nash that he could no longer distinguish the real from
the imaginary.
• Drug-induced hallucination
• Hypnotic state
• Collective delirium as in some religious cults
• State of false consciousness – or being in the grip of a
powerful ideology.

Examples of loss of control or

agency
• In the movie, Neo learns that he is nothing but a slave of
the intelligent machines. He has no control not only over
his own mind, but over his own fate.
• The Frankenstein syndrome: a human creation appears
to acquire a life of its own, and begins to control the
creator.
• Human inventions appear to become autonomous and
no longer receptive to human control.
• Worse, human inventions come to dominate human
beings, very much like machines taking over the world
and enslaving humans. Money, material possessions,
gadgets, toys like Tamagochi, etc.
• Computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses that take
over the operating system of computers.

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Philosophical and sociological

questions raised by the movie
• What is Truth?
• Is it the representation of the world as it really
is? This assumes being able to compare one’s
picture of the world with a reality that is not just
another representation.
• Or, is it the representation of the world as it
appears to us in the course of our life within it?
• The first is called objectivism or positivism, the
second is called constructivism or perspectivism.

Philosophical and sociological

questions raised by the movie
• How much control do we humans actually have over
our lives?
• If society is entirely a human creation, a product of
successive generations of human beings, does this
mean we can also change it at will?
• Or, does society develop a life of its own, independent of
our individual wills, that shapes and constrains the way
we live?
• In other words, isn’t society a kind of autonomous Matrix
that has colonized the consciousness of human beings?
Is society an autopoietic system?
• Auto+poiesis (auto=self, poiesis=create)
• Autopoietic= self-creating and self-reproducing

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Ethical and political implications

• If our consciousness is shaped by our own
society, to what extent can we trust this
consciousness to tell us about the reality (or the
truth) of our society?
• What about science? Is science free from the
ideological, political, religious, and cultural
influences of the social matrix in which we live?
• If we are ourselves products of our society, to
what extent can we change our society?
• What will it take for a human being to become an
agent of social change in his own society?