Deep Magic: Matrix, Menace and Virtual Reality 249
Matrix or Matrices: "That in which anything originates, develops, takes shape or is contained."
Battles rage all over the Net about what a geek is or isn't and who is or isn't one.
Here's a new, cheap and reliable litmus test: geeks will almost certainly love the "Matrix".
Like technology, movies are unpredictable. They rarely do what's expected of them. Despite market research, focus groups and surveys, people often don't react to them the way they're supposed to. Maybe that's why movies about technology are so interesting.
But when techies, nerds, Webheads and normal people look back on l999, I bet they won't be remembering "Phantom Menace", the first movie to ever make a profit before it appeared in a single theater, but "Matrix," an amazing movie about virtual reality that came from nowhere. Pizza Hut doesn't any "Neo" action figures and there are no "Morpheus" dolls at Toys "R" Us. This movie had to make it at the box office, not the toy store or fast-food franchise, and it did.
In several ways, both of these movies cover the same ground. Both are based on the same time-honored myth: young man leaves home when duty calls, setting out to save his world, confronting the demons within as well those from without.
Both movies are stuffed with mythic references and symbols and religious imagery: the Chosen One is sought and found, so that the world (a/k/a Force) can be saved and we can all ascend to a better place. The "Matrix" takes this language even further, with references to Zion and other Biblical places.
In both movies, the hero is opposed by overwhelming technological superiority, but, despite fancy guns and light swords, he ultimately has to put the machines down and look deep within himself for the weapons he really needs to win. The late mythologist Joseph Campbell, who inspired much of the Star Wars mythology, thought that Star Wars was about two of the oldest and most potent myths in the world: the inherent conflict between man and his machines, and the humanity (or lack) it behind the masks.
Since our culture has few remaining rituals, he wrote, the young have no way of learning how to live in civilization, apart from the stories they see and tell to one another (in our time this would be TV, movies, music, the Net and Web).
As Campbell suggested, both movies present technology as a central drama for the world. Is the spirit stronger than the machine, or the science that creates the machines? Can we control the things we make?
George Lucas and the Wachowski brothers aren't the first to take on this question. Mary Shelley did it in "Frankenstein", Bram Stoker did it in "Dracula," and so did Bob Kane, creator of Batman. It's no accident that these are some of the most popular and successful stories in the world.
Both "The Matrix" and "Star Wars" are suffused with technological imagery, computer animation and an acute digital consciousness. Both present the future as technologically centered, dangerous and unstable.
One difference: "The Matrix" is much more of a hacker movie than "Phantom Menace." In "Matrix" good guys are - uncharacteristically for Hollywood -- hackers, and they fight the forces of evil by hacking into the system.
In my mind, both movies (and the Star Wars series) have a powerful and timely political theme: the individual against bigness, battling the growing corporatism that is the dominating economic, and perhaps political, reality of the late 20th century.
The Empire and the Matrix are both none-too-subtle stand-ins for the mass-marketed bigness that is making work a nightmare, making money the only possible corporate goal, squelching individual expression and creativity and making Hype an oppressive social reality.
Both movies recognize this bigness as evil, without explicitly saying so. But since both hackers and geeks are fiercely individualistic and distrust bigness, both movies strike a chord. In George Lucas's movies, evil is never really vanquished, only unmasked. The end result of almost all of his movies is: No Matter What You Do To Them, They Will Be Back. He's right. They always are. The Matrix is comparatively more hopeful.
But despite the similiarities between the two, the movie that cries out to be seen more than once is "Matrix, " which soundly thumps Lucas on his own much hyped turf. (There isn't much need to go back and ponder the neurotic Jar Jar's mystic references.)
"Matrix" was the first Hollywood movie that's come close to capturing the sometimes bizarre - even spiritual - quality of virtual reality, the uniquely cyber-sense of existing in two different dimensions or zones, the digital plane increasingly life-like, colorful, realistic and captivating.
For most people, the experience of going online is routinized and commercial, involving research, work, shopping, auctioning, e-mailing , trawling for information.
But for some people, at least some of the time, there is the sense of living on the border between two different worlds, and even sometimes of losing track of which is real and which virtual. Gamers and MUD'ers say that this sometimes happen to them when they've played with the same character long enough (or too long), and know the trials, pitfalls and tracks of a game so well they feel as if they live there. Or when they've found themselves drawn too deeply into the life of a character they've created.
Sometimes coming back to the real world is sad and disorienting. Sometimes they feel more like their character than their physical self.
I have close online friends I've never spoken with, met or seen. Once in awhile, I wonder if they're real, or if they're precisely who they say they are.
Programmers transfixed on the paintaking, sometimes joyous experience of writing code that works or solves problems also talk about living in two realities, and once in awhile, losing a precise grip on which is which. Many hate the pressures of the real day-to-day world, feeling most alive writing code.
"Sometimes you get in 'The Zone'," one programmer tells me. " I don't think it's another dimension like you're thinking, but I think any virtuoso has that-- a guitarist putting out a kick ass solo or a hacker kicking out hundreds of lines of golden code. It's not other worldly, but its an odd sensation. You operate on instinct and sometimes don't realize it. And the next day you look at what you did and kinda go 'wow'." I have a hard time classifying it as another place. Its just a matter of being hyperfocused on a task. I'm not going anywhere, I'm just performing really well and you get lost in it."
But to me, that is another place, one never experienced by the vast majority of people, and cyberspace is, increasingly a different reality, a virtual one, as the Matrix suggested. The virtual world is very much a place where things originate, develop and take shape -- continuously.
Some people have always seen programs and code as having a "golden" or mystical edge. In the New Hacker's Dictionary, Eric Raymond writes about "deep magic," which he defines as: "An awesomely arcane technique central to a program or system, esp. one neither generally published nor available to hackers at large (compare black art); one that could only have been composed by a true wizard. Compiler optimization techniques and many aspects of OS design used to be deep magic; many techniques in cryptography, signal processing, graphics, and AI still are.
"Deep magic" is something only a handful of people can really do. That makes it an alternate reality all of its own, something that sets them far apart.
The Net is a powefully representational medium. Anything that can be listened to, written or whose image can be captured, can be represented online. So increasingly, the world out there can be replicated in here.
For me, this experience of crossing the boundary between literal and virtual reality is most often apt to happen when I'm trawling on some mailing list somebody has suggested I subscribed to, or lately, on some weblogs.
Working on a column about weblogs, I was going from one to another, surprised at the graphic quality, good writing and smart thought. They were crammed with ideas, links and non-hostile conversations.
I spent several hours going from one to another, returning late at night for several nights. I was trawling through one of the last around midnight one night, tired and not really focusing, and I came across a lengthy and impassioned essay accusing a writer of self-interest and other short-comings and arguing that he didn't belong on a particular website. The piece struck me as angry, almost bitter, and I didn't like the writer being described either.
It wasn't until I looked at the piece more closely that I realized that the website was Slashdot and the writer was me. The sensation was disorienting as I came across quote after quote of my own words in this completely unexpected place, and in a completely different -- and hostile -- context than I'd written them. For a second, I couldn't quite grasp how I could be reading such a thing while researching a piece for the very site I shouldn't be writing for. Or why I didn't recognize my own words. Other times - rare - I might write something that just works, for reasons I never understand, and which sparks all sorts of discussion, comment and response. In this cases, I sometimes make new friends, and start conversations that might go on for months, even years.
This experience is so different from traditional journalism, and so powerful -- and in some ways, so complicated and internal -- that it's not possible to share with people in the real world, including my own family. Even if I could, I'm not sure I'd want to. It would take too long, and isn't really possible to recreate, much like the programmer writing his "golden" code above.
In a way, the "Matrix" brilliantly captured this sensation of dual realities that comes from working and exploring the Net and Web but actually living in a completely different plane, or "zone." We always know who are and where we live - the reality of our lives - yet we can enter a special place.
We have one language for the people we know online, even a different, sometimes freer way of speaking. There are different procedures, protocols, politics, sensibilities here. We know names and places people offline don't know. Programmers have a completely unique language that can only be understood by other programmers. After awhile, the gap widens.
We (even non-programmers like me) increasingly live in one dimension, they live in another. The distance becomes so great it really can't be articulated, and the virtual reality is as powerful as any other.
The "Matrix" did several other memorable things. It raised martial arts to a cinematic art form. It had a sense of humor about itself (remember the only time Neo smiled? When a martial arts program was being downloaded into his head.) It captured the edgy, bristly, unpredictable, geeky deep magic of the Net and the Web in a way that has completely eluded Lucas, or that he decided to ignore.
It portrayed the sensation not only of creating a software program, but of living in a software program, a feeling not unfamiliar to hard-core hackers, geeks and programmers. In one scene in "Matrix," Mouse the programmer creates a training program for Neo in which the hacker encounters a beautiful woman, put in the program to distract him from the bad guys. Later, Mouse asks him if he liked the woman, and if so, if he'd like to meet her. In Neo's world, and in the Matrix, it's not a fantasy but a real possibility.
One test of a movie is how long it stays behind, how much if it is imprinted on the moviegoer. In that sense, the "Matrix" is triumphant, leaving"Phantom Menace" in the dust. That makes it the geek movie of the year.
Re:Matrix != Geek (Score:1)
Forget the Matrix... Want a REAL geek movie?... (Score:1)
It makes sense, it's grounded in reality (it's about VR, and the morals behind it). Great music. Great acting, and really disturbing. None of this pseudo bullshit geekiness. The Matrix was designed to try to sell geekiness as cool. Quite honestly, it's not. Computer geeks are generally socially-inept, fat, balding, pale men who sit at home all day playing with makefiles to get their desktop to do something neat. Pretty sad. The Matrix shows what every computer geek out there wants to be. Pretty pathetic. Watch Strange Days. Great, realistic, interesting sleeper.
Litmus test...? (Score:1)
If we are going to critique the Matrix, we should be reminded that one of the reasons why people liked the Matrix was simple: it was violent. And violence sells. The aspects of cyber-existence were nice, but the sheer amount of screen time devoted to automatic weapons fire, kung-fu fighting, and people dying was signifigant.
Because of this violence, using this movie to judge someone's 'Geekiness Quotient' is inherently flawed. Any true test would have to rely far less on dodging bullets and cool camera effects.
'Geek' is a label. Or a stereotype, depending on your perspective. The point that might be better made by the article and 'The Matrix' is an awareness of this condition of seperate and simultaneous realities. In that sense, you could call 'Matrix' not just groundbreaking, but Art in the traditional sense of the word.
An interesting question is if the 'Brothers' intended for this movie to _have_ this effect. Or if they just sat around playing Quake, and one of them, smoking a joint or drinking too much beer, said, "Let's make a movie based on Quake, except..."
Personally, I don't think they did: they're too young and too unpracticed. They just got lucky. Not that there is anything wrong with luck, other then it doesn't create good sequels.
Another good question would be if there really _is_ a way to determine if someone is a true Geek. And, if there is, should we bother using it, or even try to find it.
Whatever (Score:1)
could not be classified as geeks that loved
it. Just because it had some ideas that geeks
could identify with, they can't assume that,
for some reason, the movie was 'above'
everyone but the most geeky. An moviegoer need
not be a geek to be intelligent.
Matrix owes much to Dick, and serves him well IMHO (Score:1)
The "nature of reality" angle, of course, resonates with much that has been said by philosophers and quantum physicists as well as writers and filmmakers; that's a whole 'nother thread though
If it's not too late to tie this back to the original post, I have to say I disagree that The Matrix qualifies as a "hacker litmus test", unless we broaden the definition of hackers to something along the lines of the definition I in fact often prefer: one who uses available tools in an unorthodox way to achieve desired results. A definition like this allows for "reality hackers" (physicists and philosophers), "imagination hackers" (SF writers and fans) and more categories of folks who would find the film interesting for different reasons. I liked the fact that the central characters were cyber-hackers, but I really don't think that point was central to the success of the film.
-paul "not cowardly, just lazy" g.
Re:The Matrix was OK, but...what about Grey? (Score:2)
One point about the Matrix that bugs me endlessly is that the goal of the rebel hacker group is to "free humanity"... free us from what? We wake up one morning and find ourselves floating in a tub of purple goo? No thanks. The notion of freedom is warped by the world of the Matrix. Once you're out of the matrix... once you take the pill, you're catapulted into the real world that you've always been curious about. And it sucks.
In the "Grey" series, 99 per cent of humanity lives in squalor of the ruined cities. They are slaves and they have no hope of attaining anything better unless they join the military. The soldiers fight in an endless war against each other. Everytime a human destroys a tank or kills an enemy soldier, he or she gets credits. Credits are traded in for a bump up one level in the society. The ideal to be obtained is "citizenship". When certain humans do well enough in the army, they get to live in the city. Grey, the hero of the story, fights his way into the city only to find that the citizens are all robots, their human bodies long destroyed, and the computer, named "big mama", is running the whole planet, organizing the war, and laughing all the way.
It's the ultimate tale of alienation and the futility of war. I was watching the Matrix and thinking of all of the AI as God stories... how all of them are so alike and yet they all still bring something new to the conversation. Almost like a
Total Recall, Bladerunner, Alien, 2001 (Score:3)
And the concept of presenting machine has human was done very well with Star War's R2-D2, since R2 was so abstract yet lovable, unlike 2001's hal, which was abstract yet had no charismatic personality... And I thought star wars kicked ass in the action department as well.
Of course the ultimate Human/Machine movie was bladerunner. The alien series also did it pretty well. I wasnt alive before 1974 so i wouldnt know anything about movies before then.
-bobby
Re:You're saying geeks have no taste? (Score:3)
To write off the Matrix's plot as "bad" probably means you went to the movie and purposely left your mind in the car (as I need to do for so many movies these days). The Matrix is dealing with subjects that have kept the worlds greatest minds pondering for centuries. Existenstialism, reality and perceptions. The tendancy for mankind to accept blindly that what he percieves is real.
I think anyone who quickly dismisses the Matrix, either doesn't contemplate on these levels, or finds the subject too overwhelming to be worth thinking about.
IMHO, IANAL, FWIW, and all the other acros needed to absolve me from preaching, the Matrix is all that and a bag of chips!
BTW: Good article Katz
Re:I have to agree (Score:4)
yup, i sound preachy but that's my
Re:I have to disagree (Score:4)
He had to get 8 virtual bullet holes into him, go into physio-VR death AND THEN come back to life before he got the "magical" powers! (Trust me, I won't bitch about you having magical powers after you take a gun, stick 8 bullet holes into your heart, and then come back to life...)
Damn, somehow I get the feeling you geeks REALLY did not get the film... (I find that a disturbing concept for a movie that I think can only be genuinely appreciated by geeks...)
The ability to do things that doesn't correspond to Matrix reality is not "magical powers"! Its Neo's ability to manipulate his interactive universe after somehow uniquely developing the VISCERAL realization the Matrix was not the "real" world. And then being able to mentally manipulate the Matrix virtual "reality".
Do you have magical powers because you can run a computer game where you're a 20th level mage? No, a computer game is not "reality". Well, the Matrix is not "reality" either. Its just so damn convincing, that it can convince you mentally to the point your body functions shutdown after a virtual bullet gets popped into your vital organs.
(There are many apocryphal instances in our "reality" (?), where the body will take physiologic manifestations based on psychological belief without physical explanation. Ex. - Christian stigmata phenomena. (It a really rough analogy, I know...))
Well, the protagonists have been violating "physical laws" in the Matrix throughout the movie. (Unless you really think you can jump from one building top to another 1/4 of a mile away...)
But apparently, they couldn't get around the VR phenomenon of death, and it limited their ability to manipulate EVERYTHING.
Well, once Neo was able to VISCERALLY reject death in the Matrix, he became able to manipulate every aspect of that virtual world. (Think of him as being "TRON", the protagonist able to manipulate the MCP computer reality because he was a programmer...) If you're Neo, and in the Matrix, and you're thirsty, and you feel like quenching the thirst, why dork around interacting through sequences of getting the virtual drink when you can *poof* a drink into your hand? Remember, there is no spoon. (Just look at what you can do with the spoon once you realize it isn't there...)
I found the ending amusing, and a reasonable way to end the movie. (Obviously, it was setting itself up for sequel. After all, Neo decides that is better to choose ugly reality to the Matrix, but how is he going to convince 5 billion people (and an neurotic, change-fearing AI)?)
The plot was a rehash of 20 years of SciFi themes. But just because the plot has been done over and over doesn't mean it can't be exquisitely redone in an entertaining manner. So the good guy triumphs in the end. Geez, I guess you don't like ANY movies.
Nope, utterly great movie. Perhaps on some level a bit too simplistic. But great.
Stop being a smartass & enjoy the movie (Score:1)
It kills me that you ruined the movie for yourself by nitpicking it to death. I mean, why? If you can accept that machines take over the world leaving only a stalwart band of humans to fight them, why pick the details to death? Anyway, I've got answers to your questions:
Why did they need to use a virtual phone instead of a cellphone? Because that allows us to have some pretty cool/tense scenes with our heros stuck in the Matrix.
Why did the computers use people instead of nuclear/geothermal power? Well, because having a few dozen reactors wouldn't be quite as horrifying as a people farm.
Why didn't the computer just crush them with big iron weights a la Loony Toones? Because that would be a really sucky movie ("Neo, you are the choosen one. You can.. wait a sec" [EEEEeeeeooowww... SMASH]).
----
Re:Forget the Matrix... Want a REAL geek movie?... (Score:1)
But, yeah, Strange Days rocked. The only problem I had with it was the timeline... we've got seven months to develop simstim if they're going to meet their deadline, and the movie isn't all that old... It'd have been more believable if they'd set it 20 years down the road... but then they wouldn't have been able to do the whole millennial bit.
Oh, it had the albino-looking chick who was in the Matrix in it, too, but her line was better in Strange Days. "Enjoy the party..."
Back to your old game (Score:5)
There is no defining authority on what people must/must not do to be a geek. And if one were to be appointed, there are a whole lot of people who'd be higher on the list of nominations than you are. So stop trying to tell us what we're supposed to think, what we must do to be official, authorized geeks. Try observing and recording rather than defining, and I expect you'll find that geeks like you better. Though your status in our peculiar gift-exchange culture may be low enough now that nothing'll help...
Oh, and when a programmer tells you that "the Zone" he gets into isn't a place, you might want to try believing him, instead of making up wild hypotheses about what he's really thinking that he didn't tell you about. You're mixing up two concepts without understanding either one.
The first is "Deep Hack Mode", that state a programmer gets into where the code flows like water, and every compile is error-free. It's a state of mind, not a place, and may be the thing hackers value above all else. It's not, in fact, unique to hacking... I've experienced it when swinging a broadsword, too (a different kind of hacking, you might say)... there, it's a state of mind where everything starts to slow down, you can see where your opponent is going and react before he starts to move, and your blade goes exactly where it needs to be without conscious guidance. You don't *go* anywhere, though, you aren't in some other world... it's the same old world, it's just running a little slow.
The other concept is that of cyberspace, a completely immersive virtual reality, which *is* another world (for sufficiently small values of "world"), that may or may not exist in the same space as this one. Gibson's matrix did... there was a one-to-one correspondence between real space and virtual space. Stephenson's didn't, and is a more accurate reflection of where I personally think we're headed. The point is, though, that cyberspace and deep hack mode are _not_ the same thing.
Re:Geek definitions (Score:1)
My own take on his thesis was amused disbelief. I can't and won't talk about The Matrix: I haven't seen it and probably won't, unless some friend forcibly drags me to a movie theater. It's more likely I'll eventually see it on video. There are some films that I saw and got a kick out of on video, like Men In Black. In every case I watched my entire environment erupt in a weird spasm of sig lines and incessant references, and eventually figured I'd see what the fuss was about, as long as it didn't cost me anything and I didn't have to go to a movie house and be crammed in with other humans chomping popcorn and spilling pepsis on the floor
I fail the litmus test for being a geek because I would rather reclusively hack a user environment out of a 486 linux box at 4 AM than go be with friends and watch movies? BZZZZZT I don't think so. This makes giant assumptions about who and what geeks really are- and aren't. Now, I'm not the most normal human. In fact I have Asperger's syndrome and keep to myself and live nocturnally and only find it easy to interact (a) with other geeks, (b) with other sorts of fellow travellers- I'm also a recovering drug addict, drugs were my only value and reason for living as a seriously fscked-up teenager, or (c) online, where I can take advantage of my verbal abilities at a pace I can cope with, suffering no jarring dislocations of my attention like you get with normal human conversation.
Yet, for Jon, he sees none of this. He's written _articles_ on people very much like me, and still he sees only little Jon Katzes who happen to have special gifts for programming or linux hacking. This blocks him from true enlightenment, because he _cannot_ know himself unless he understands how unlike himself others can be. Instead, we are all bigger, better versions of Jon Katz, and we all slaver for spiritual development and self-actualization, and also love to take in a good movie with friends and unwind. Hey, who doesn't? It's only human...
Well, hell... for years I felt so unhuman that I ended up identifying more strongly with cats than people. If I'd known that my traits were also geek-like, I might have been a bit less alienated: but I'm just coming up on thirty-one, and I am not a scared kid anymore- and guess what- I am _still_ not 'human' in the sense Jon Katz instinctively assumes he'll see in anyone he looks at. Hi, Jon! I'm the dark side. I'm living on disability because of a lifelong inability to cope with the 'human' routines. I don't do movies, and my friends are those who can deal with not seeing me very often and still understand that I love them, in my own way. I fail to fit your litmus tests in many ways- and you know what? I'm not going away, and I _will_ speak for anyone who wishes to be spoken for. It's easy to just slink off feeling marginalised yet again- oh dear, looks like I'm not good enough to be a geek because now I have to be socially acceptable- or at _least_ like normal things like socializing and movies and entertainment.
I've travelled a hell of a path- at one point I was even voluntarily in a psych ward (it seemed better than the homeless shelter, and I declined to be drugged into submission). One thing I learned there which startled me- people seem to behave as if 'recreation' is some kind of requirement, and it has to be certain kinds and usually involve other people. I guess for most, it is. It startled me because what was being suggested seemed like work- and because I didn't understand the concept, because all I _was_ was an organic machine for having ideas and designing stuff- for hacking, basically, though I didn't know the term at the time.
I am that which you do not understand, Jon, and I am not alone. I never was. There were other people like me all the time, and now I know who they are and what they do, and I even _work_ (not making much money but work) with two other geeks (more the 'peopler' kind, whereas I am shaping up to be the 'silverback' type, which astonishes me), who understand me and accept what they don't understand.
I am the side of the force you don't want to face, Jon. You might think it is the dark side. You might fear it is 'more powerful than you can possibly imagine'. But it's neither- it's just alien to you. And unless you can embrace the alienness and not try to remake it into your own image, the better to control it, you will be killing that which you try to celebrate.
As for the ideas which are _really_ what you mean as a litmus test... some people have read philosophy and cognitive science. You aren't the only guy in the late 90s who can read, Jon.
I would second '2001' (Score:1)
Re:The matrix was stupid, think about it... (Score:1)
Yes it made sense. Using bioelectric energy to power electronic devices is not a new idea by far. I own a watch that is charged by bioelectric energy...don't ask me how it works...I haven't had the time to disect it yet...The Matrix was not the AI. It was a container for the minds of the power supply. and there wasn't any one AI, there were many, there's a line from it "...as soon as we started doing the work for you it became our world." Implying more than one AI. It probably wasn't the first time he had used his body, if you'd have been watching there was synaptic leakage when they were jacked into the matrix and they had muscle twitches and spasms...Of course, you're not going to care whether I agree or dissagree with you becasue you refuse to suspend disbelief. BTW it's just a movie.
-Severedbrain
Erm Don't put us all in a box! (Score:1)
Hmmm Mr Katz I do indeed like your articles even if I'm not sure whether I just spelled Katz correctly. At any rate, I think you do indeed perform a great job in stirring up the pot, as one poster wrote in a while ago. I like your sweeping generalizations to a point, but sometimes it seems like you are believing what you write, and thats dangerous.
For instance, take your series on "stories from the Hellmouth." Those were really good. Thought provoking. Made me want to abuse my power as Opinion Editor of my student paper and tell everyone why shootings happened. Luckily I have an Editor in Chief who is able to see both sides of an issue....man Mr. Katz your writing is more propoganda than truth sometimes! Albeit you are a very good writer, but uhm as my parents used to say when I'd show them an essay, cut the drama and make it something reasonable, I mean, not all your essays have to end with "and if this is applied, then the world will become a better place."
There is seriously nothing wrong with observing that you thought the Matrix says a bit more than Star Wars, heck, if we're doing comparisons on movies that say things here, why not Gattica? But calling it the ultimate geek movie is a bit boxy...keep in mind all the plot holes etc. Most geeks are sticklers for little details, and its irritating when i see Neo climb out the window without a cell phone in hand, then right before he chickens out, the cell phone appears in his hand and what do you know? He drops it! Weird stuff like that.
So Mr. Katz I'm not really bashing your writing, I do like it. Just make it a bit more realistic, and realize that, apart from Jar Jar, Star Wars was cool too, and the only reason I saw the Matrix 5 times is because I had many friends that hadn't seen it
Re:At the end of the day... (Score:1)
well, not everyone likes all that human interest crap. I personally only find life worth living when I'm coding. Will anyone remember you or care after you die whether or not you played frisbee with your g/f? No, of course not, and even if they did, who cares? You're dead! I don't give a rat's ass what people think of me after I'm dead.
Before I knew how to program, all I did was that real life crap you talked about. Sometimes I would go to a senior citizens community center and keep them company. Then, one day I came home, looked at the stars, cut wind (I'd had beans that night), and said "I don't give a damn about those old people. I don't care that they appreciated whatever I did for them, and everything I do is dull and boring."
So, I began to ccde, and that's all I've done since. And now when I have a sandwhich of oskar mayer chicken and turkey bologna, I look at the mess of chopped ratmeat dangling from my fingers and heace a big sigh of satisfaction. No g/f, no family, no bullshit. I get to code all day.
Re:You're saying geeks have no taste? (Score:1)
Please - let's not degenerate into vitrolic attack about mass generalizations of geeks, or what is not a geek, or what a geek would like or not like, or the common attributes of any group of people.
Like it or not, we are not as individualistic as we would imagine. We share many likes and dislike with many others - especially those with similar interests. Just because one makes a generalization does not denegrade the distinct individual attributes of each one of us.
As for "The Matrix", even with it's flaws, I found it to be a very good movie. Of course, K. Reeves is best when he doesn't speaks ("Johnny Neumonic - retch!). Yet, I found the premise to very interesting, the story engaging, ane the special effects excellent. I left the movie theatre feeling that I had gotten my money's worth and thinking creatively and differently. Of course, the current state of AI, Virtual Reality, and programming pales in comaprision to the myth and fantasy of the movie or our imagination.
Phantom Menace??? I was seven when I went to see the original Star Wars - most definately one of the defining events in my life and for my generation. Yet the Phantom Menace left me empty - great special effects, but no edge and no seriousness to the story. Sorry G. Lucas, but not this time.
In recommending movies to my friends - go see the Matrix and wait for the DVD version of Phantom Menace (hopefully with a remove Jar Jar option).
Later.
PorkZilla on "The Matrix" - dissecting a movie (Score:1)
I've just seen the Matrix ; I left the cinema satisfied but with a strange sensation of something being "wrong" in the movie ; this sensation is very boring so I've tried to dissect the movie from different point of views, looking for the "wrong" point/s
-----------------------------------
Cinema-Geek point of view
Matrix is a summa/sum of a lot of ideas taken from different movies, with the concept of virtual reality bonding them all. The result of this collage is a fine movie with a great deal of very fast action and fine special effect, but far away from being the killer movie of the year.
I've seen many sequences and ideas that I've already seen in other movies, here's the list:
1) Terminator 2 - The concept of AI taking control of the world, trying to kill every human being. Agents never dies, but transfers from a body to another - looks like the liquid metal terminator. The posse of the good guys attacking the corporate building, house of evil, loaded with different arms.
2) Blade Runner, The Crow, Mission Impossible, Honk Kong action movies : all the dressings of the actors, the concept of coming back from the death to a new life of reaction to evil, the shootings sequences - extremly spectacular, I liked them a lot.
3) Jackie Chan movies and countless others - jumping from a building to another with spectacular jumps
4) Bruce Lee movies, Jackie Chan movies - all the nice martial arts sequences.
5) Waynes World - the "fly in the air" martial arts sequence, with its distinctive comic effect
6) Alien - the insectoid like bug that's planted under Neo's belly button
7) Neuromancer (book) - uploading different skills to the brain in a few seconds.
Hard Core Computer-geek point of view
The code showing on the monitors is unrealistic because nobody could read and understand such fast a stream of information. Plus, it's neither hex or binary but seems to be completely random. Ok it's a good fx if you want to show the "stream" of data, but not the information in the stream ; that's Hollywood
As noted in another message, the telephone call used to come back to "reality" is pretty useless. The user could simply "think" of disconnecting ; but that's the foundation of all of the nice chasing sequences
Neo's home computer is running some weird operating system : doesn't seem to be Windows or Unix , but the machine should be working with 1999 operating systems ; seems like the AI has got no clue on that ! Hitting ESC on keyboard and Ctrl-X was not enough to convince me the movie is "realistic" or that the actor got a clue.
The magneto-optical disk that Neo sells to his friend is bulky ; next time just have look at new IBM microdrives.
I've noticed a nice Helwett Packard logo painted on the tunnel in the underground scenes.
Not a geek's point of view
"Ok nice actions but I didn't understood what was the plot of the movie, and the idea of virtual reality is still not clear to me". That was my girlfriend reaction ; She didn't understood that Agents couldn't die because they were programs, and she felt uneasy with jumping from a reality plane to another. She said the movie was completely targeted to me and my "geek" friends, and that it was plain science finction, and while she completely agrees with me that computers has got a great role in our society, she was scared of the concept of a brain to computer interface.
Ok, I can agree with her that Matrix it's plain science fiction, but the director failed to underline the points that connect the reality to the virtual reality, making common people think that after all that the "hackers" are dreamers who tend to be sociopats (Neo) and loners (Neo again). Being myself a "grown" hacker , I've got enough experience to say that I couldn't care less, please all of the non-geeks take the cue , I really don't care about assimilating you, please geeks use your magnetic card , avoid the cue and go see another movie
PorkZilla, son of The Matrix, born with a Maxtor in his head.
Science Fiction (Score:1)
Science fiction doesn't necessarily have to be based in real science. Wouldn't be all that fictitious then, would it?
Look at Ray Bradbury. One of the best sci-fi writers of all time, IMO. Read through the Martian Chronicles. There is a whole lot of technology in there that is just laughable as hell, even for the time it was written. But it's still conceptually fascinating, and that's the entire point. I remember a bit from the first story ("Ylla") about some "magnetic dust" that you could sprinkle around the house and it would pick up all the dirt and dispose of it. Now is this feasable? Not especially. Is it interesting? Hell yes it is, especially the way Bradbury writes it.
And while we're on the topic of nonsensical science...anyone want to explain to me just how "the force" works? Microbes my ass, I want to hear how people can be telekinetic, fire bolts of lightning, etc. I'm also interested in how they got their laser beams to travel so slowly, and to show up in a vacuum.
It seems to me that even if your entire post is valid, it could be applied to "Star Wars" with only some very minor changes.
I can build it... (Score:2)
Perhaps one reason why geekdom responds so positively- is that we can actually build it. The Matrix I mean. If there was ever a project to take mankind to the moon again- it would take that level of effort and commitment but it could be done.
I Can't Read Gibson (Score:1)
In spite of my general dislike of cypberpunk as a genre, though ("Darwinia" being the best example I've read, and a damn fine read at that-- I've not tried "Snow Crash," but I plan to, as I'm assured it's an excellent book), I did like "The Matrix," in spite of the flaws. It's definitely the best cyperpunk movie ever, and probably the one by which all subsequent cp movies will be judged.
It even inspired me to try "Neuromancer" again (for the third time). I made it through the first 2 chapters and gave up in disgust. Yikes.
The Matrix as *the* geek movie? IDTS... (Score:5)
are involved with today, but I definitely would
not go as far as saying that all geeks like
the Matrix, or that anyone that likes the
Matrix is a geek.
I'd even suggest that there is yet to be what
one can call the defining geek movie, because,
as pointed out before, geeks are not the same
as techno-nerds. It's nearly impossible to
isolate the single aspect that defines geekdom.
However, in terms of movies, geeks tend to rave
more about movies that *aren't* blockbusters
or award winning, but instead movies that are
unique and different and break from the acceptible
norm (just like geeks themselves). While none
of the movies I list below I'd consider to be
*the* geek movie, these are the types of films
that you hear mentioned in their circles often.
- Any Stalney Kubrick film, specifically
clockwork Orange, 2001, and Dr. Stangelove.
Kubrick broke the mold of movie making with these
films, *and* incorporated a number of mind-opening
ideas into them. He will be sorely missed.
- Bladerunner. A very very grim vision of the
future, and if this was enough to scare William
Gibson, it's enough to scare me. (*still waiting
for the rumors of a Neuromancer film with much
more Gibson control over the final output*)
- Heathers, or Clerks. Both were sleepers, and
both were very very dark comedy. For some
reason, these movies seem to be popular with
geeks, maybe because we are sufficient away
from the norm of sensitizing to be able to avoid
the typical feelings associated with death or
other morbid topics.
- Army of Darkness, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Clue, and others - Written to be
campy but with humor, these movies knew how to
make fun for themselves. Something about how
geeks know how to make fun of themselves as well.
(And what probably makes MST3K a prime canditate
for *the* geek show).
Also note that geeks do love the very popular
films (Pulp Fiction, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc
etc), but these truely don't belong to the geek;
they are directed towards the audience at large,
and lack the elements that some of the films
above have.
Re:The Matrix as *the* geek movie? IDTS... (Score:1)
Eraserhead
Repo Man
Brazil
Naked Lunch
Better Off Dead
The Big Lewbowski
TRON
meloncholia?
THX1138 - busted? for drug evasion? drug EVASION?
And the blockbusters that were still good - despite Hollywood.
2001
Terminator
Blade Runner
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
Re:The Matrix as *the* geek movie? IDTS... (Score:1)
Strange Days
Altered States
The list goes on and on and on. It's been a long three decades.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
Re:The Matrix as *the* geek movie? IDTS... (Score:1)
Barton Fink
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
Matrix != Geek (Score:5)
Haven't the evil computers heard of nuclear or geothermal power? Why exactly do they need to be at a _virtual_ telephone to leave or enter VR? Why won't a virtual cell phone work? Or a virtual banana, really? Why does the computer program feel the need to make its agents human-like? Why not just crush them with 2000-ton weights?
I can go on, but the point is the movie didn't really CARE about technology beyond being a way to 1) make people say "woah that's so weird and deep" and 2) have an excuse to have special effects to make people say "woah, that's so cool and pretty".
Which is fine for a hollywood blockbuster, but hardly makes it geek art.
--
Re:Oh brother (Score:2)
Please create an account with the following link:
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=prefere nces [slashdot.org]
where you can remove this author that does not inspire your soul. Doing this may make you more productive and others too! Its a win-win situation!
Re:"The Matrix" was stupid, stupid, stupid. (Score:1)
You should have seen it twice (Score:1)
In other words, they're getting gigawatt after gigawatt out of ocean water; the "human battery" thing is just some twisted thing that evil computers do for kicks.
Of course, I would have LOVED it if they had thought of another poster's suggestion: that the apocalyptic world was entirely humanity's fault, and that the Matrix was a "Zeroth Law" reaction of the computers, meant to keep humanity happy and prevent them from hurting each other, for our own good.
It would have lost the "pure evil" factor, but it would have allowed a lot of cool complications to develop in a four-sided war:
The computers who want to help humanity
vs.
The humans who want freedom at any price
vs.
The humans who want to cooperate to produce virtual utopia
vs.
The computers who are sick of supporting inferior life and want to wipe out the whole project to make room for themselves.
Re:Matrix vs. TPM (Score:1)
I also think Katz would often be moderated down (Score:1)
Interesting comment. I'd moderate it upward if Slashdot was giving me the option.
Your posting echoes some of the things I wrote about a few months ago for Stating the Obvious [theobvious.com].
Drop me an e-mail.
Re:Back to your old game (Score:1)
Correct, but if one had to be picked, I'd put my vote in for A portrait of J. Random Hacker [hasc.com] from the Jargon File.
Like reading my own biography...
Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty
Futurological Congress (Score:1)
Re:Striving for an understanding of geek culture (Score:1)
The culture and the lifestyle that Katz discusses and that we participate in is incredibly young, underdeveloped, and misunderstood, even by its own members.
I don't think its so much "misunderstood". We're a very emotional group, though to the "outsiders" they don't see our emotions the same way we do. We're also very logical, and reason is as important to us as our emotions (even the use of logic to reach an emotional state -- why i'm a programmer).
We're also generally non-conformists. Whenever told that a non-conformist is conforming to some group or stereotype, (s)he will immediately come up with reasons why (s)he doesn't belong to that group. The problem is that we're being told by those analyzing us that we belong to a group of non-conformists...logical paradox, not easily resolved.
Hence, a source of some the more emotional responces and rejects of attempts to define geekdom in any context.
But that's just my opinion...
Joe
Re:movie otaku (Score:1)
However, I personally did love the Matrix, will probably be buying a DVD player just for it, etc. Why? The "Yes! Yes! YES!" factor.
Rock on Jon.
You guys missed the biggest point of the Matrix (Score:1)
It was about a bunch of sheep waking up each day, heading to the office at 8am and clocking out at 5pm to drive home to the little nuclear family in the new minivan.
People are slaves to life, following rules layed down by unseen forces because "that's the way things are". Hackers don't follow these rules, nor do most geeks.
Do geeks generally wake up and head to the office at 8am each morning like good little wage slaves trying to pay off that new mercedes benz? Rarely. We work when we feel like heading in for the day, and while money is necessary to survive, we generally do it for the challenge.
It's why we're geeks and not suits.
The Matrix summed this up well. A whole world of slaves trapped in their own minds, following the "be a team player" rules layed down by unseen masters.
Except for our hero hackers that break out of the "system" and lead an existance not confined to pointless rules.
I think that makes the Matrix a very good geek movie.
Admitably it has its flaws.
-Synn
Re:You've Got it Backwards (Score:2)
I don't think you can assume that all geeks have read Socrates. I haven't (although I am familiar with the Cave of Shadows bit), and I bet that many geeks still in HS haven't read it either. (I may be biased, since my HS sucked. Perhaps most people do have exposure in HS.)
Ok, I just read the Allegory of the Cave [uottawa.ca]. It doesn't really seem to address the concept of reality being based only on perceptions so much as persecution of those who have seen beyond the shadows. So, I don't think it's really all that applicable to the Matrix. Although it does kind of touch on the question of the true nature of reality, that's not the main point.
Anyway, I don't think you should assume that all geeks would be familiar with the allegory. And, the Matrix made the fact that all you have are your perceptions much more tangible. It clearly demonstrated that reality (for you) is really only what you percieve.
Re:Matrix vs. TPM (Score:1)
Not a geek thing (Score:1)
Many non-geek people I know like these movies quite a bit. The Matrix offers a sci-fi view of the world that, although may be common, is rarely brought into the movie scene.
Phantom Menace is Star Wars, and manages to keep up all the goodness of the original trilogy, and will attract geeks or not. The special effects in this movie are such that it had better win the little statue come next winter. But this does not make it a geek movie. Many people will like this, geek or not.
Matrix, no. ExistenZ, si! (Score:4)
In my opinion, the mythological aspect of Matrix was just tacked-on. I find it hard to believe that there are people who are awestruck at the revelation that Neo is an anagram for One, or that there are parallels to be made with the Judaic concept of the Messiah or various mind-over-matter philosophies. The movie may never have said these things explicitly, but it might as well have put them on the screen in big block letters. And maybe I'm too skeptical for my own good, but to me, it seemed this papier-mache theology was just an attempt to add depth to a movie that couldn't provide it by way of, say, characterization or plotline.
For my money, the VR movie of the summer is Cronenberg's ExistenZ. It's not big budget (in the wake of Matrix, Ep.1, et al, it looks practically no-budget), but it deals with VR in a fashion that dispenses with sci-fi pseudomythic conceits and deals with the very human consequences of manufacturable reality. There are touches any hardcore gamer will love, like characters that loop their dialogue until somebody says the right thing to them. More importantly, there are characters who are complex enigmas, not cardboard cutouts, there are conflicts which are complex and multifaceted, not cartoonish good guys vs. bad, and the emphasis is on what the actors say and do, not what they wear. And, for all Matrix's dizzying camera angles and CG tricks, one of the most effective effects I've seen this year was ExistenZ's seamless pan-and-dissolve when the characters move from reality to the game world.
Having said all that, I might as well confess that actually, my favorite movie of the summer so far has been The Mummy. Campy horror movie, big scary bugs -- that and a bag of popcorn and I'm happy for hours.
The Zone (Score:2)
Sometimes the Zone will not come when when you seek it. Sometimes it will come when you do not seek it. For some it may come easy, for other with much effort. But always with practice, it will be easier. There are also different depths to the Zone. Perhaps you do not enter fully into to the Zone, but manage to get into the Groove. The Groove is close to the Zone, but still a different animal. When in the Groove the Task is still fully within your understanding. It is clear and and precise. Your actions are straightforward. There is no struggle to perform the Task, yet there are still distractions, you are still aware of time passing, your thoughts may wander and then return.
The Task really does not matter. It can be coding, gaming, martial arts or even sex. But it must be something you enjoy thouroughly or at least find intersting and captivating. Something that can grab hold of your mind and pull you deep into the Zone. Something that no matter how focused you become, you still wish for more, to exceed any limits and operate at full capacity.
Just about everyone has found the Zone at sometime or another. For some it comes easily; for other with much struggle. But is is always worth the effort. It is a sensation unlike any other. It is your mind in a whirlwind of thought. The productivity of a mind in the Zone is amazing, even to the one who experiences it. It is the Zone.
So find the Zone. It will come if you seek it.
I have to agree (Score:1)
But the ending was a letdown. Basically, Neo just suddenly acquires magical powers and kicks the bad guys' ass. He doesn't have to do anything for this, it just happens. So after 2 hours of buildup, the movie went out with a whimper.
Still I'd rank it above Menace. Up until the ending it did have a good plot, and there were no annoying children or Jar Jars to mess things up.
Mysticism in the Movies (Score:5)
As we become more "civilized", we desire greater and greater mastery of our environment. The feeling that programming brings us is complete mastery over this one part of our environment. (Linux anyone?) Programming is a art derived from the depths of Aristotlian logic. Everything is completely deterministic and non-random in programming.
Contrast that to the world outside of the computer, which operates in a continous relm, which we cannot fully grasp or comprehend. It may be deterministic, but unless we know the complete state of the universe, we will never know what exactly will happen next. We have intuitions, ideas, and worries about the real world, but are they always 100% correct? Our emotions and our feelings are still there, whether we acknowledge them or not.
This is why these movies touch us so. Not because of the heros and the villians, but because of the mastery of the human soul over the unknowable. It is a parable that is thousands of years old. It is the same story, told in many different ways. But it always touches us.
I think The Matrix is in the top 5 all time (Score:1)
Andey Rublev, done by Tarkovsky. It is the best
movie about hacking (it is about 14'th
century Russia though:)
Re:Neuromancer (Score:1)
-lx
Re:movie otaku (Score:1)
I can't stick up for anything else, I don't consider myself an adept in any other genre. But don't diss on the Asian influences - they were lovingly and exceptionally well done.
BTW, the melodrama and posturing were Anime beasts. You missed the reference, but I forgive you.
Re:Matrix != Geek (Score:2)
Morpheus sees the fields of humans being born, maintained and killed by the AI as a 'crop'. Tubes and wires emanate from the bodies. Conclusion: humans are being used as biological energy sources to supplement fusion.
Morpheus makes a stupid assumption. Humanity's greatest asset is the mind. You may as well raise cattle, or trillions of chinchillas. But if you need a foundation for a massive neural network...
Dan Simmons approached this in the Hyperion series. An AI using human brains as fuel for a computational network. This also allows for another twist to come into play the next two movies: the AIs' very existence is dependant on the humans they have shackled. They live in the cracks of the human mind.
Re:Pigeonholing Geeks (Score:1)
Why do you decry the media in their attempts to say who *is* a geek...then turn around and try to define who *isn't* a geek?
While I would agree with you that *all* people who liked the Matrix are not geeks...your attempt to then distance *your* definition of geekdom away from the Columbine shooters makes you guilty of the same geek profiling you are condemning.
How do you *know* that the Columbine shooters weren't geeks? As I find it highly doubtful that you knew the two boys personally, I find your conclusions, based on media portrayals, suspect at best. The fact that your pre-conceived notions of geekdom do not jibe with the actions of the Columbine shooters has absolutely nothing to do with anything. The media can't pigeonhole geeks, to be sure..but, then again, self-proclaimed *geeks* cannot do it either.
Re:I think The Matrix is in the top 5 all time (Score:1)
*please* let me know more about this film...it's hard to find good russian-topic stuff in america (much more so actual russian-stuff) and i like to keep my eyes open.
mail me? ykaterina@hotmail.com
-katja
[who agrees matrix is in top 3]
Re:The Matrix joins the ranks of geek movies (Score:1)
in my experience, ONLY the geeks liked the matrix. i tried taking some of my 'normal' friends to see it, and the two with philosophy degrees were the only two who liked it.
yeah, the matrix had its issues, but i'm gonna be inclined to agree with katz on this one...he may be romanticizing the whole thing a little, but hey - that's his style. and i certainly don't think that starwars lacks "staying-power"...it'll be around just the same as its predecessors. but, now that the matrix hype is gone, i really think it's going to slide onto the same shelf as clockwork orange, army of darkness, and mst3k...
who knows? let's wait and see...
Re:Striving for an understanding of geek culture (Score:1)
here where i live (cambridge ma), the freaks and the geeks are one. it's kinda nice, cause it merges a lot of problems. a lot of us really are sick of being labeled, categorized, or "understood". those, are [go ahead, flame me] the types who are getting all offended here; not big on sharing themselves with people who *might* hurt them. understandably. i realize this is bordering on touchy-feeley psycho-babble, but it's 6 on friday and i'm fried. anyway, yeah, a lot of us are gonna be overly cautious about people "trying to understand".
i, though, don't mind too much. i've found that trying to help my mom "understand" (that and i think turning 25 helps) has really helped us in our relationship...is it gonna make the world right? nah. but i don't mind the ones who are *honestly* trying to bridge the gap. especially cause katz is respectful and seems to get it.
Re:Geek definitions (Score:1)
Attack Katz for the sake of attacking Katz? (Score:2)
Katz is just saying, on average, people who classified themselves as 'geeks' liked that movie. It's true too. Look at this thread. In general 'geeks' liked this movie. Everyone seems to like to find minor flaws with Katz's statements and twist them WAYYY out of proportion, on the pretense of sounding more intelligent. Maybe because they are bitter THEY don't get to write these huge articles for slashdot (even though I suppose anyone could).
I've seen half a dozen people complain about what Katz said now. Some were good. Some were, "I randomly disagree, because you are John Katz."
On The Matrix. It was an ok Moive. It was a great Geek Movie. Why was it a great geek movie? Because on average, geeks liked it. I'm sure theres a hardcore coder out there who HATES the matrix. So what? Oh well.
As for a geek litmus test, I'm not sure you can go quite that far, but there are certainly worse indicators.
- Paradox
movie otaku (Score:5)
If you love movies (and you're a geek), you probably didn't love The Matrix. You might have liked it (hell, I even liked it), but I don't think you could love it.
You had to see the parts that were obvious homages either to John Woo or to HK action flicks in general, and seen how woefully short they fell in comparison to the best of those they imitated.
You had to see The Battery Scene, and probed the swiss-cheese holes in the premise of the movie. The silliness of the final battle. The melodrama of it all.
You had to have seen that the acting was...occasionally...sub-par.
As a matter of fact, The Matrix is a movie you'd love to hate. But you can't. You have to give it credit for the execution of the shared hallucination concept. Plus, bits of it actually achieved the kewlness that the rest aspired to. Part poseur, part thrasher.
Maybe you don't have to have done any of these things. Maybe you did love the movie. Maybe you're just the sort of person who'd show up on
Keep up the good work, mistah katz.
Parallels... (Score:2)
My point is that while Matrix may well be a good and insightful film, it is hardly unique in discussing these particular questions. Frankly I much preferred Nirvana's baroque, complex atmosphere, reminiscent of Blade Runner in a Neapolitan slum - one that was unaccountably littered with Macs! Maybe the future isn't all bad...
Matrix Fans: Not just geeks ... (Score:2)
I also found it interesting to see a thread on the "alt.yoga" newsgroup talking about "The Matrix". Many people in this rather un-techie ng were moved by the ideas in the film dealing with "What is reality?". This movie has more to it than what first meets the eye, too
YS
You should see the Matrix, then =) (Score:2)
There is no sun, in the Matrix world, so that source of energy and entropy cannot be harvested.
Geothermal is about the only source one could concievably tap, and I think in the movie, the earth's core is like lukewarm. People live there, for example =)
So yeah, it does violate a whole bunch of 2nd law or thermodynamic principles.
-AS
Right on! (Score:2)
He even goes as far as to acknowledge that all of it is illusory, the steak, the wine, the restaurant, but that is what he wants and prefers. He can accept living in an illusory world, but is not himself strong enough to create his illusory world, even so far as it being all in his head.
Neo, however, can create his illusory world. He can 'bend himself', rather than bending the spoon.
-AS
Re:Problem: Matrix and the Littleton shooters (Score:2)
This could be argued, as the Littleton boys were planning this for a whole year, way before the Matrix came out.
It is more likely that the Matrix and the Littleton boys both *copied* the same source for inspiration, the cool cliche that is black trenchcoat, sunglasses, and guns.
Black trenchcoats aren't a new thing, introduced by the Matrix. T2 had a guy with a shotgun and trenchcoat. Western myth has for years had gunslingers in trenchcoats, though the sunglasses are new.
-AS
No, it wasn't =) (Score:2)
Why is it people think all this is inconsistent?
I grant that the battery is ill thought out, and more likely a mistake on Morpheus's part, unable to comprehend why the machines would need humans.
As for hardlines, their need is unmistakeable. One needs a port into/out of the Matrix. Their appearance as phones is also in the nature of consistency:this is how the Resistence sees it, not how the Matrix programmed it. Half the movie is about the illusory nature of reality, in and out of the Matrix, and how the human is capable of manipulating reality and bending it or yourself to suit it.
Cellphones are ports which can be accessed, but not entered/left through. Cellphones are *brought* into the Matrix by the good guys, so they are essentially virtual access ports =)
As for the city at the center of the Earth, that is far fetched. More likely it's resting somewhere on the mantle(close enough), especially with the hypothesis that so much time has passed that the Earth's core is cool, that the half life of many nuclear materials is way over, and that there is no energy/entropy source called Sol.
-AS
Re:4th grade? (Score:2)
Likewise, we don't know that he even took physics in HS. Physics was optional in our school =)
And we don't even know if he's particularly science oriented. He could just be a particularly good hacker and programmer.
-AS
=) (Score:2)
Just unplugging them kills them, as their mind/consciousness is in the Matrix but not in their bodies.
My argument would be that once in the Matrix, the individual has no way of navigating out of the Matrix, that once you are surrounded by illusion one cannot just ignore and step out of the illusion. Neo might be the only one who can, but the again, he's the Chosen One.
Let me ask you(or anyone else even =)
You are currently residing in a virtual reality. You believe it. How do you leave? How can someone else, inside or outside this reality, make you ignore all of existence and just leave?
The hardline is the only process known, probably a combination of protocols, messages, and correct handshakes, to disconnect one from the Matrix. The machines obviously know how to disconnect someone from the Matrix, and maybe even the red pill has something to do with it.
But stuck inside a reality, one doesn't obviously know how to leave it. Short of dying, that is.
-AS
Nothing is *real*, everything is *illusory* =) (Score:3)
He lives in the real world, but longs desperately for the luxuries and comforts of illusion. He *knows* it's illusion, that the steak is imaginary, but to his brain, it is juicy, and tasty, and wonderful.
The real question then is, how can Cypher so willingly accept illusion? It is, after all, all in his head, all a function of his will and imagination. Counterpoint is the scene in which 'There is no spoon,' because Neo has come to be able to bend himself, to alter his own reality.
But again, one could argue that is the function of the Chosen One, and that someone like Cypher is just incapable of sustaining himself, of *creating* his own illusions, and must return and live within that created by the Matrix.
Of course, I'm not a philosophy major, so I probably really screwed up something =)
-AS
4th grade? (Score:3)
My education didn't touch the second law of thermodynamics until 11th grade, junior year of HS.
It may be intuitively obvious that one can't get more energy out of a system than exists in the system... But blindly, naively, one can point at gasoline as an example of a system that releases more energy than one puts in(a spark creates a huge explosive combustion)...
So for Morpheus, untrained in any classical physics, it is entirely plausible *for him* that humans are used as batteries.
-AS
Re:Matrix != Geek (Score:4)
Geothermal is not viable because the Earth's core has cooled significantly. Heck, Zion is supposedly somewhere in the core, so enough time has passed since Today that the Earth no longer has a superhot liquid core. That amount of time should also zap a whole bunch of the nuclear capable materials (half life, anyone? I don't know them off the top of my head), so both Geothermal and Nuclear have been tapped out by time.
Why a virtual telephone booth? Because that is the whole concept/premise of rules and laws. The place exists because of rules and laws, and one of them happens to be, the only way in and out of the Matrix are hardwires, and these look like telephones. It could have been anything, but the human mind accepts the idea, and coalesces around the image of a telephone.
It's not that the Matrix created the phones, you realize, but the humans who use them, the whole precept of illusion and stuff. Morpheus gave a lesson to Neo about reality and illusion in the dojo, remember? It's all in your head, what you see, what you do.
Again with the Agents: This is how the people *see* them, not necessarily how the machines craft themselves to be. The Matrix is a reality more than halfway composed of a shared hallucination/dream, until someone can teach them how to control it, like Neo can.
The Matrix is surprisingly consistent... Except for the second law of thermodynamics argument. Humans are not a useable power source; we may have awesome imaginations and they could concieveably be tapping us for our dream state, but the movie explicitly called us batteries. That is something I can't argue about; it seems silly/stupid.
-AS
Matrix vs. TPM (Score:3)
The Phantom Menace will be remembered one for all the hype it produced, and two because its the beginning of the end for Star Wars. Two more movies and then we will have to be content with watching them over and over on DVD, VHS , or what ever media evolves that the place it on. No more to a spectacular saga that has had the world imagination in its grasp for so long.
Comparing TPM and Matrix is also a horrible lapse in judgement on your part for movie most remembered by geeks because we are just now hitting the peak movie season. Who is to say movies like the 13th Floor, or even Austin Powers don't leave a better impression or influence on us and make us remember the Matrix as a movie with sup par acting but some interesting special effects done on an open software system.
TPM will live long after the hype due to its place in the Star Wars family. The Matrix may become a cult classic for wannabe hackers or even theorist to ponder over but that is the extent of it.
Re:You're saying geeks have no taste? (Score:2)
However, I have read articles dated recently (within the past 2 weeks) that say that the writers actually intended the Matrix to be a Trilogy, and that plans are definitely in the works for at least a sequel. The only problem is that Reeves and Fishbourne are not under contract for a potential sequel.
Aside from that, I still think it was a great movie, even though I am never impressed with Keanu's acting. However, I think he did a better job in this movie that he had previously (i.e. Speed).
The special effects were great, but I admit, the plot may have needed a bit more development. Sure, this theme that we all live in a dream world has been used before, but so what? I don't think that anything else using this theme has portrayed it to the level that The Matrix has.
I am really hoping that they produce a sequel, because it will be interesting to see how they can warp the plot line further. For instance, will The Matrix evolve and be able to fight Neo? or will everyone be freed? Will the earth in the 22nd century start to thrive again?
I guess we will just wait, and until that point, I will be waiting in anticipation.
The movie was okay, but wasn't a geek movie (Score:2)
The Matrix had a whole list of flaws. Some are provably wrong, and some just ring untrue.
The first flaw was the power source. This is just plain wrong in so many ways. The easiest way to pick this apart is to look at efficiency. No system has 100% efficiency. If you put energy into something, you get less out the other end. Humans were being fed. If the AIs had just used this food directly to generate heat, they'd have gotten more out of it. Not only are humans inneficient engines, but we 'waste' energy on things irrelevant to producing heat. We grow large bodies, etc. This is a waste from the machines point of view. The whole matrix exists only to keep people alive, so chopping out humans would only make it more sense because this big matrix wouldn't be needed.
The second flaw was about the date chosen for the sim. We're told it's because that's when the world supported the highest population. Sure, maybe. But, why not simulate a million seperate desert islands with barely-sentient cavemen on them? Then we're told that a utopian sim was first created, but people didn't believe it. So, don't create a utopia, but why recreate all the flaws in our society, especially if every needless death robs the machine of power? They could have introduced cars with pedestrian-avoidance fields, better medical, etc. If this makes people 'not believe the reality' then they're telling us people will suddenly start going insane because airbags save too many lives in collisions in the real world.
The other flaws just 'sound' wrong.
There's the big one, of the AIs not being in complete control of the sim. They wrote it. It's like playing a MUD and expecting to change the game through the force of your will.
Then there's the thing about the AIs needing to combat the humans via agents. If being unplugged is fatal, all they have to do is stop sending data updates to 'bad humans' and they'll die. Data is being sent over a network that they control, so all they need to do is stop it at any hop, and that's easy. Thus no more agents. No need for them to play-by-the-rules, sort-of... If agents can jump fifty feet across roofs, dodge bullets, etc, then why can't they shoot lasers from their eyes, or anything slightly more useful? After all, the AIs control the reality.
Third, why is being uplugged fatal? This would only happen through bad design. And I mean sub-microsoft design. If brains still work the same way they do now, then 'you' are always there. The only way to immerse you in a VR is to tap into your senses and pass in the virtual world. So why do you connect directly, without so much as a fuse between you, to the evil computer? Why not have a simple computer between you that you control? If the shock of switching worlds suddenly is fatal, then have the simple computer watch for a shutdown, then it freezes the world in the last state it got, and slowly fades you back into reality in a non-fatal way?
Honestly, if anyone would plug themselves into something where a winnuke would not only punt you from IRC, but kill you... Yeesh. Better hope a script kiddie in 2150 never gets your IP...
A techno movie with flaws doesn't honestly strike me as a geek movie. It was a kick-ass (literally) action movie, and as such, with the cool shoot-out and kung-fu scenes, was great fun to watch, and I'm not suprised that many geeks liked it, but it WASN'T a hacker movie. The most realistic 'hacker' scene it had was Neo, fallen asleep, getting a keyboard imprint on his face.
You've Got it Backwards (Score:2)
It breaks down into two basic plot lines:
1) AI rebelion/war (ala Terminator)
2) "The Caverns of Socrates" the idea that the world you see is an illusion.
Now, The first idea is so old, it has hair on it, and any geek has seen/read so many books/movies about it that it is now rather boring, but non-geeks have avoided that "sci-fi trash" and the Matrix (with its pretty special effects) has lured many of them into the fold, and the Idea is new to them.
THe second Idea, that the world around you is fake, Has also been done a few times in sci-fi, though not as often as the AI thing. However it is based (stolen) on one of Socrates thought experiments, and for the geeks of the world, it is also not a new concept. But for all the non-geeks, and proto-geeks out there, this is world-shattering strangeness.
The *Real* Matrix test of Geeknees, is whether a person was annoyed at the innacuracys of the film, not if they were impressed. A true geek would only be impressed by the film's special effects, because the ideas the film puts forth are old hat.
As for the Star Wars referance, WTF? The movies are not meant to be competitors, this nonsense about cyberspace, there wasn't any in episodes 3,4,5 why expect it in episode 1?
There is no violation. (Score:2)
The machines cannot directly use the energy from Twinkies not having developed the technology to do so - thus the Matrix serves the dual purpose of having humans convert ding-dongs into usable heat form, while ALSO using the mental powers of humanity to search for a way to directly extract the energy from Ho-Ho's (which in our world are actually mapped to subatomic particles, thus our search for a workable fusion power source).
Think, people! Think!
Deep Magic and the Future of the Internet (Score:2)
between reality and virtual reality. However, his usual disclaimer applies:
Jon Katz is not a programmer. Despite his brief reference to "deep magic",
his appreciation of the 'net is primarily of high-level constructs (weblogs,
MUDs, chat rooms, etc.) and their impact on humans. Thus, his view of the
'net is as an alternate world, whose rules are different from those
governing the real, "stub-your-toe" reality.
He misses two key facts. First, if you picture the Internet as reality, then
programmers really are wizards, since we can not only understand the basic
nature of reality by delving into tomes, grimoires, and RFCs; but also change
the very fabric of reality. (Granted, changing the definition of an IP
packet on your machine might not be such a great idea--but you can do it if
you really want to.) Being able to find out exactly what makes your reality
operate at the very lowest level is pretty cool--think of it as being able
to look at a person and see all of the organs and tissues working and
interoperating, the cells growing and dying, the mitochondria metabolizing
sugar molecules, the medichloreans interacting with the Force (OK, not really),
the protein molecules being built from amino acids, and so on, all the way
down to the quantum waveform of each electron.
The other fact he misses is that the Internet isn't really about MUDs, or
chat rooms, or 3D interactive worlds. The Internet is purely a means of
sending information from one place to another. The reason this is important
is that the protocols defining the Internet do not place restrictions on
what networked applications can use them for. This means that the emergence
of a global, universal computer network isn't simply a revolution, as Mr. Katz
styles it. It is also a boundary condition for a nearly infinite number
of future revolutions that we can't even imagine yet. Here's another
analogy: before the Earth had accreted from the primordial gas cloud,
there was no chance for life to develop; soon after the Earth had cooled
enough to form a solid crust, primitive forms of life appeared. The primitive
forms of Internet life are already widespread (applications, that is). The
future of the Internet should be interesting.
You're saying geeks have no taste? (Score:4)
Re:Matrix Fans: Not just geeks ... (Score:2)
Matrix has spawned many philosphical discussions among me and my friends and I'm sure other people have similiar experiences. What is Reality? How do you know what is real? Is it real because you percieve it as such?
It also deals with general human mentality. We will destroy ourselves one way or another. Matrix has a very interesting perspective of how that will happen.
Spend some more money, go see the movie again and think about what it really is trying to tell you.
Re:You've Got it Backwards (Score:5)
The philosophical antecedent for The Matrix is really the work of the French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes:
Meditations on First Philosophy [wright.edu] I.12 (Veitch trans. 1901).Plato's story of the cave ( Republic [spies.com], Book VII) is with the nature of things (ontology); Descartes' concern is rather with how we know what we thing we know (epistemology), which is the concern of The Matrix. (Granted, if you can draw a clear line dividing ontology from epistemology, you win a philosophy Ph.D., but the distinction is generally serviceable.)
I don't think it's necessary that a film's ideas be wholly original, but it's necessary that the film present those ideas in a new way. The idea that aliens might long ago have visited the earth long predates 2001, but the image of ape-men inspecting a black monolith does not. The Matrix was successful because it presented its themes in a new and visually stunning way.
Pigeonholing Geeks (Score:2)
Plus, looking for any kind of meaning in contemporary Hollywood movies is silly. I liked The Matrix, but to pretend that it's any kind of science fiction watershed is silly. In fact, after watching some scenes from a 2001 DVD last night, it's obvious that no SF movie since then has come close to treating SF seriously. Perhaps that's because I can't think of any movie since which had the active involvement of a real SF writer. Everything now is just an effects movie, and the purpose of the effects is to look cool on screen, not to show any realistic version of speculative fiction. That's fine, but if you're looking for meaning, read a book.
Nobody's talking about the real world! (Score:2)
Obviously, this is no way to generate energy. You'd always get less useful energy out than you put in, in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics. However, the only reason the machines keep the humans around (at least as it is explained in the movie) is as power generators.
It's a clear absurdity in the movie, unless you assume that the humans really had no idea what they were being used for, and didn't understand thermodynamics. Some of the web comics explained the humans variously as a kind of cheap memory chip or hard drive, IT workers, and soldiers.
So, you want to talk about stuff that morons are spouting? There's only one here...
The Matrix was OK, but... (Score:4)
The concept is neat, but not exactly original. Pick up 5 random compilations of sci-fi short stories/novellas, and I can guarantee that you'll find at least one wake-up-from-a-virtual-world story. Keanu Reeve's futile attempts at acting really hurt the movie badly. Not to mention the various plot holes that are too numerous to go into here.
It was a visually stunning movie, although the special effects seemed forced at times. I could almost hear the director saying, "Let's see...how can we work in another slow-mo negligible gravity shot with those cool bullet-path effects?" At least it wasn't as bad on this point as Lost in Space...god what a horrible movie.
Overall, Phantom Menace was a much better geek film in my opinion. At least the Star Wars universe is a world of amazing imaginational creativity. The Matrix was mostly refried old conceptual beans.
a true geek movie has yet to be made (Score:2)
Hollywood rarely makes real speculative Fiction movies. They make either Space Opera Star Wars/Trek, Babylon 5). Or they just make standard format action movies and set them in the future to be kewl. The ones I mentioned are *good* space opera as opposed to bad (remember Battlestar Gallactica?) but they don't have the respect for the science/tech that good Science Fiction has.
The Matrix Had a lot of the components. A lot of the plot structure was recycled from stuff we've read before, but it hasn't been put before the mass market that dosen't read books in a sense that can touch on Matrix.
What hollywood notices is that Matrix made a lot of $$. Maybe they will take a clue and fund some other good movies. More likely they will take the wrong clue and we will see lots of films with stop action martial arts and bullet effect CGI.
If they wanted to make the 1st real geek movie I've got the project for them. Take The Diamond Age, get Strazinsky(sp?) to direct and make *2* parallel long running series a la Babylon 5 (pre TNT). The main line story is one project and the other would be segregating out the Illustrated Primer and use it as a series that actually *would* draw in little girls and teach them to think/survive/lead. The world would be a better place with a few million more Geek Grrls in it. Ok, it's not a movie per se, but still.
Babylon 5 was the first to take a Science Fiction ideas and take the time to tell the story properly. A movie can't really do that. A movie can't properly tell a story larger than a novellete. Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep (Bladerunner) is really a *very* short story and nothing has yet done a better job since. The Matrix is close but has the look of something novel length that had too much detail dropped out in order to run in the allotted time. At least,I credit it with that to explain the many seemingly gaping plot holes. Dune and 2001 have equally gaping plot holes that are largely resolved in the books - but get dropped out in the movies or replaced with bizzare contrivances to skip over "the boring stuff"(think of those stupid "wierding modules" in the Dune movie).
garyr
Matrix v. SW and the Zone (not M$) (Score:2)
Star Wars is about as mass media as they come, understandable and appealing to 8 or 80 year olds. Thus diluting the message and lowering the overall impact of the film. If given the choice at this point there is not question which movie I would want to see again....Matrix.
...........
But to me, that is another place, one never experienced by the vast majority of people, and cyberspace is, increasingly a different reality, a virtual one, as the Matrix suggested. The virtual world is very much a place where things originate, develop and take shape -- continuously.
Feeling the groove, getting in the Zone, becoming One with whatever you do. This feeling is present and achievable in nearly any environment. You can get there coding,writing, reading, or playing hoops. That point where you cease to think and just move with the moment often without realizing it, it just is. Saying that the vast majority of people don't feel it is silly. I've had the same sense of "zoneness" playing Quake as I have playing football, and I would assume it can be attained knitting or kayaking or whatever.
Jon, decent article, try not to be so coy I spent several hours going from one to another, returning late at night for several nights. I was trawling through one of the last around midnight one night, tired and not really focusing, and I came across a lengthy and impassioned essay accusing a writer of self-interest and other short-comings and arguing that he didn't belong on a particular website. The piece struck me as angry, almost bitter, and I didn't like the writer being described either.....It wasn't until I looked at the piece more closely that I realized that the website was Slashdot and the writer was me.
if it's the same article you mentioned before, which I've read, you must have been smoking something particularly nice because the name of the article is "The Katzdot Effect" [theobvious.com].
You are missing the WHOLE POINT here. (Score:2)
Why? Because we are used to being spoon-fed cute little articles that don't require much intellectual input. Sure knowledge is needed to experience regular stories to their potential, but then again any moron can memorize a text book. Some here are missing the point.
I would propose that some who do not like Katz have never felt "Deep Magic" or have been in the "Zone" because it's too hard to think as it's much easier to memorize things. (notice I said SOME not ALL).
on the topic of off-topic (Score:2)
I spent several hours going from one to another, returning late at night for several nights. I was trawling
through one of the last around midnight one night, tired and not really focusing, and I came across a lengthy
and impassioned essay accusing a writer of self-interest and other short-comings and arguing that he didn't
belong on a particular website. The piece struck me as angry, almost bitter, and I didn't like the writer being
described either.
is off topic. It is a blatent attempt to slip a personal agenda into an otherwise interesting article.
Mr. Katz, you are a talented writer; whether or not they like your works most people will admit that. Please do not insult the intelligence of slashdot readers with such obvious use of this space to assuage your damaged ego.
I want to read your writing, not your diary.
Re: Sequel to the Matrix... (Score:2)
The scifi.com news story:
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-net.html?199
The Matrix web site comix section:
http://www.whatisthematrix.com/cmp/comic_index.
(Look under "comics news"...)
BTW, I agree w/ Katz--The Matrix was a fun, geeky movie.
Re:Matrix != Geek (Score:2)
Talking to a couple of techie friends of mine who had seen the movie separately, they had both spotted the same problem, and and both come up with the same alternative premise. It didn't ruin the movie for any of us.
If you have to have an in-context explanation of why Morpheus would offer this bogus reasoning, you could simply say that the rebels did not fully understand what the Matrix was or what it was for.
Re:You're saying geeks have no taste? (Score:4)
Speaking from my own experience with both, when I watched the Matrix, there were times when I just giggled out loud from what I was watching on the screen. It moved me on a level I have not felt in *many* years. I walked out of the movie theatre with that "bigger than life" feeling. I'm not saying it was a perfect movie, far from it. Just that it captured a culture (hacking) in a way that I have never seen before. On the other hand, The Phantom Menace generated an "eh, it was pretty good, but had some real problems". I walked out of the movie with my feet still planted firmly on terra-firma.
Geeks have taste - but know how to suspend it. (Score:3)
The premise of this movie was good. The special effects and fight scenes were good. But it was a bad movie - bad plot, bad ending, bad acting. In all your talk about "geek profiling", dear Mr. Katz, have you possibly forgotten that geeks can have interests and opinions on things other than technology? Shame on you. How much different is "all geeks will love a movie with virtual reality in it" from "all geeks in trenchcoats are anti-social psychopaths"?
I have to disagree. While generally, geeks do have interests other than technology (Music for one, good music at that. How many of you have listened to one of the classical masters this week?) We also love art, and many of the other things that outsiders deem normal. However, of all my geek friends, there isn't one that didnt see the matrix, and few of those that only saw it once. For the most part, we love "bad plot, bad ending, bad acting" (MST3k, Monty Python, Red Dwarf, Dr. Who, ST), as long as they appear to be true from the heart, (and at times, it seems, made by a fellow geek?)
Matix and the Geeks (Score:3)
Two weeks ago, a few of my geek friends and I caught a double feature at the the local movie theater (being geeks on a budget) we saw Entrapment (an excellent movie of a sneaky bastard Sean Conner - but a little too "cute" at the end) and the Matrix.
The one thing about the Matrix, that I first noticed was the use of hackers as the protagonists and the heroes of the plot, which is, of course, not the first time that this has occured. Secondly, as the audience watched as this onion of a plot was peeled away, layer by layer, I was very impressed at the immagination of the writers of this story. To take "reality" and twist it so that what was up is now down and
But to create that kind of setting, and work with it almost perfectly (*BaronCarlos DID notice a few inconsintences in the plot, but only a few, so he is not going to complain (this isn't Batman and Robin the Movie, or Armaggeddon).
After the movie, as always, my geek squad and I talked about the thrilling series of stimmulation of senses that we just witness together.
Of the three of us, we all agreed, it was a "Geek Movie" - There are two male opinions and one female opinion. Two Scientist Opinions and one Engineer Opinion.
We all agreed that it was made either by some very imaginative geeks, or a couple of guys on an acid trip (but looking at the "Techinical twist" that was put on things in this movie, they were either geeks or had a really goood geek techinical advisor.)
To say that the movie was enjoied by the entire parent population of geeks, I cannot personally say. I do know that the sample population enjoied it, for more reasons then that of Geek.
Maybe we're trying to define ourselve so enthusiasticly, that we cannot see that there isn't an adequate definition out there?
Just like science, nothing is definable, there will always be error.
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
Striving for an understanding of geek culture (Score:5)
This is no small task, mind you. The culture and the lifestyle that Katz discusses and that we participate in is incredibly young, underdeveloped, and misunderstood, even by its own members. If any of you have ever attempted to explain to "an outsider" what it is that causes you to sit in front of your computer for hours on end, searching, reading, programming, exploring, letting the life of the net flow through you, then you know that it can be very difficult from all approaches. Partly this is due to terminology and lack of common reference points between "us" and "them", but partly it's because we ourselves don't necessarily understand what it is that makes us do these things. We can easily place emotional, social, and academic labels on the reasons for our activities, but at the point we realize (as Mr. Katz and many others have) that we're living an almost self-sustaining and self-completing life in this new world, we must strive to understand it at at deeper level than what these labels can offer.
No matter how much you disagree with Mr. Katz or dislike his tone, realize that he his only making his best attempt at achieving this understanding, as we all are in our day-to-day "online" lives. It's not just about what movies we all like and relate to - it's about the deeper reasons that a movie or a thought or a piece of code puts us in "the Zone" together to sort out how we got there. I applaud *any* attempt at achieving such understanding.
Geek definitions (Score:5)
Re:Back to your old game (Score:2)
Matrix fight scenes are force-like (Score:2)
It absolutely killed me to see those fight scenes in the Matrix, however. This is *exactly* what I have always imagined a light-saber duel between two jedi masters to be.
Each jedi uses the force to anticipate and to, effectively, slow down time. To an outside observer they are going very fast, a la Menace's special effects, but to the jedi, the rest of the world has slowed down, a la Matrix.
It would have been a spectacular sequence to have gone from from a Matrix style frozen image or slow-mo swaths of the sabers, to an incredibly fast paced fight, which Lucas did provide.
Doug
At the end of the day... (Score:3)
Which sounds like it Could Happen To You?
One question, before I move on to the larger issue: why does it seem to suprise so many people that there's a strong spiritual aspect to geekhood? Given the "Voices from the Hellmouth" series of articles -- and my own experience -- I would be suprised if geeks weren't more spiritual than the average population. Where else do geeks have to turn? Other geeks -- the online community? The online community isn't sufficient in the same way that actors prefer stage: there's a personal connection in being there. That's why so many people talk about 'telepresence.' A full-immersement sim (VR 5) is a way around the problem of teleportation -- it they can't if you're 'really there' does it really matter if you are 'really there' or not? The way things are going, it looks like we'll find out just after I die of old age
The same principle of the subjective applies to films like Wag the Dog and The Truman Show: what is 'real'? Think about it: you get up on Monday morning, logon, get your work for the week in an e-mail from your boss -- work which you complain about in a reply to co-worker; their contributions showing up from the `cvs update` you just asked for; you get your news from cnn.com.
At the end of the day, go outside and take a look around. What have you done? It's a nice night, so you decide eat outside. But (like the majority of Americans) you're either single or divorced, and you don't have anyone to eat
Go to sleep tonight and dream of the things that make your life worth living.
-_Quinn
Re:You've Got it Backwards (Score:2)
The philosophical antecedent for The Matrix is really the work of the French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes:
I disagree. The concept ("All the world's an illusion, and the only way you can transcend it all and attain nirvana is by truly believing that it is so") was propounded by the Hindu Vedanta philosophy of Shankara (first century AD). Shankara himself was re-stating the earlier Upanishads in a more consistent manner. Descartes was 17th century AD. It is also interesting to note how much of Hindu life is influenced by this concept ("Maya", we call it).
Joseph Campbell (Score:4)
Did Campbell inspire Star Wars, or simply write of it's ubiquitous mythological influences? He wrote of the parallels between myths in The Hero with A Thousand Faces
For example, Anakin Skywalker's failure and Luke's success with the Force parallels Uther Pendragon's failure and Arthur's success in uniting England. It echoes (or more appropriately cycles) with Lancelot's failure and Galahad's success in finding the Holy Grail.
What Lucas and the Wachowski Bros have really tapped into are the archetypal stories that influence us--from the Last (or Only) Son of Krypton, to the Chosen Slayer.
Campbell documented these parallels, and may have influenced works following the publication of Hero, but AFAIK, Lucas' vision was borne from straight myth and media.
Re:Matrix != Geek (Score:2)
There is no question any complex simulation has certain assumptions hardwired into the fabric of the system. In fact, it is a process that made Kurt Godel famous, basically the formalization of the fact that if you create any formal expression system (the matrix) the very system contains elements which cannot be expressed in it. Hence phone booths are ok, cause this may be the way the fundamental system is wired. The system itself is incapable of adjusting or altering them because it cannot "express" them.
Agents and stuff are simple, one can make the argument that since they don't exist at all, this is simply the representation "you" are seeing. In this world, 10 people can look at the "same thing" and it really is 10 different nonthings.
OTOH, beating such a system _cannot_ be an issue of "I've got more firepower than you in the shared concensus", i.e. the gunfight in the lobby. One interesting thing about a lot of VR simulations is that they have to be slowed down for the human observer. In short, in many cases you beat the computer in twitch games cause the developers deliberately waste enough time to give you a chance. We've got a demo for our system that flies you through a nasty corkscrew under the computers control. Under human control, nobody has yet made it through the second turn, and there are 32 such turns at speed.
Hence, the way you beat such a system is by co-opting it against itself, by reexpressing the paradigm in such a way that you have the advantage. You've got one to start with, the machine is stuck there, it can't leave. The flomo bullet sequences are a good example. I do believe that this is the true meaning of the verb "to hack".
But the first floor shootout was just stupid, imho. What would I have done is to say, OK if you know it's a phantom, shape the phantom. The effect I'd pick would be the Xaos bubble derez sequence as seen in lawnmower man 1, I'd do it at an order of magnitude higher resolution, and I'd just derez the first floor. 10 to 1 the core logic fabric then drops the second floor right into place. All you have to do is not be crushed
Why the Angst? (Score:2)
For me the Matrix was impressive in terms of it's
cinematogrophy and equally impressive in having
some incredibly bad writing in the script.
Sometimes when you put the two together, you get a
winner. Hong Kong Cinema is chock full of
examples of movies that served up "cheese" on a
golden platter with deadly intent to be cool, and
I think the Matrix tapped into that.
Reading this article what I find more interesting is
Katz's continued 'angst' at not being universally
accepted and heralded as the journalistic voice
of
article was a diversion that detracted from what
was (as another reader wrote) an interesting
article.
Katz, my man. I'll give you the advice Yoda gave
Luke Skywalker on Dagobah..
When it comes to being a geek: "No! Try not.
Do... or do not. There is no try."
-AutumnLeaf
The Living Force, or the Matrix? (Score:2)
- Star Wars: the Phantom Menace
was far better than the matrix, and that Star Wars is the film that we will all be remembering in a few years.The central reason why, I believe, is that Star Wars is all about the Force. The Force permeates all Living things, flows through us, and surrounds us. It is what binds the universe together.
The Matrix has nothing with which to compare, in this respect.
The Force is something that we can all relate to, I think. "The Path", "The Way", "The Tao", "Spirit", "Kalaam", "Logos", "The Word", "The Name", "The Force." Surely, it is something that we have all had some experience with, as sure as you are reading the words on this page.
The Force is something that we are receptive to. It's a flow, a beingness, an essence. Simultaneously incredibly gentle, flowing through all living things, and tremendously powerful, like the waves of the sea.
Yes, it listens to our commands, but one never gets the impression that the force is something that you can just kick around, like you can a program or a computer.
The Force is treated as something greater than us, it is not our "inner strength". Our "inner strength" may come and go; it can snap in two like a twig before incredible winds. The Force is always present, always with us.
This is not some sort of, "You should be humble and beat yourself on the head, better watch out because the Force will get you" message.It is just about making ourself receptive to the Force. It is gentle, and loving. Taking time to listen. Forgetting ouselves, ignoring the machine, clearing our thoughts, stilling our mind, and really taking the time to listen.
As we die, the Force will be with us, the same Force that has helped us live our life, the same Force which George Lucas describes with his movies. (The Force is with us now, we just are usually more receptive on our death beds.^=^_^=)
For these reasons,
Star Wars will be the movie remembered in the future as a transcendant series.
With Love,
Lion {:)}=
(This isn't to say I didn't have fun watching the Matrix, I just didn't think it was all that deep, and it was a bit on the predictable side. But I did enjoy watching it!)
Can we all say conglomeration? (Score:3)
For starters, I'd say it's the best live action comic/Anime film yet. Second, I can't think of another big budget Anerican film that's done the Hong Kong wire thing better. Additionally, it's undoubtedly the best implementation and filmic visualisation of cyberpunk yet.
Having said all this, did I love it? No.
It might be new and exciting for the mainstream, but the visual style and dramatic techniques I'm past being familiar with. And as for the "oh wow concepts" that annoyed me the most. Gibsonites around the world (like me) no doubt dosed through the most of it. The movie Johnny Mnemonic should have been?
Bring on Neuromancer: the movie, and let's get back to the bigger (yet more subtle) ideas that started it all. synd
Re:Geek definitions (Score:2)
If you want to judge me in any way, thats ok with me, you're entitled.
As a general rule, if something seems stupid, and is written by someone who previously has not shown themselves to be particularily moron like, you can probably assume an ulterior motive.
Then again, he probably likes the read of his own writing, and I'm almost certainly way off the mark
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