Bruce Newman: 'Matrix' taps into deepest tech fears

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Bruce Newman: 'Matrix' taps into deepest tech fears
By Bruce Newman
Mercury News

 

In ``The Matrix Reloaded,'' God finally gets his close-up.

We know it's God because he's wearing a white suit, has snowy white hair and
is sufficiently omniscient to watch about a hundred TV monitors at once.
Also, of course, because he declares that he is the supreme being of the
computer simulation in which humans think they've been living. ``I am the
Architect,'' He says. ``I created the Matrix.''

That's right. It turns out God is a computer programmer.

``Reloaded'' is the second installment of the futuristic sci-fi thrilogy,
opening Thursday, and like ``The Matrix,'' it occasionally interrupts its
action scenes long enough to inquire whether technology has become god of
the modern world. The sequel seems to be warning that your computer is not
your friend. In fact, it may be trying to enslave you. For anyone willing to
look deeper than the films' glossy exterior, the ``Matrix'' mythology hacks
into our heads with a warning to resist technology's chilly embrace.

This is a neat philosophical backflip, because ``Reloaded'' uses powerful
computer-generated effects to provide a technological thrill ride that you'd
have to be a Luddite not to love. The movies tap into our darkest suspicions
about technology, while advancing the technology of illusion in a way that
forever alters the way filmmakers will be able to virtualize reality.

The trilogy's geek gods, directors and brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski,
have imagined the Matrix as a neural network of computers that works
alarmingly like the Internet. The machines have harnessed humans as an
energy source to keep them running -- just as the Internet thrives on a
global web of users -- and the Matrix is an integrated delusion, an
operating system in which life is just software.

In effect, the movies themselves have become a matrix, a grid of
candy-coated images that becomes stickier and stickier, until we're trapped.
Technology's seductive qualities are made real in ``Reloaded'' by a new
character named Persephone (Monica Bellucci), who lures Neo, the film's
reluctant messiah, into a kiss that nearly sets off a catfight with Trinity
(Carrie-Anne Moss). ``She's like a vampire of emotions,'' Bellucci says of
the temptress she plays.

In real life, technology has become so seductive that it's not uncommon for
people to spend more time with their computer than their family; to engage
virtual strangers in chat rooms instead of getting out of the house. Almost
nobody thinks this is a good idea, but almost nobody can stop doing it.

``We've set something in motion that gives us the feeling that we can no
longer control the outcome,'' says Philip Clayton, professor of philosophy
at Claremont Graduate University. ``We're at a state in the development of
the technology where the lines between `real' and `virtual' are no longer so
clear. And the overlapping technologies are so complex that no one person
has the overview.''

Not even the technological wizards who created ``The Matrix'' had that kind
of second sight. ``We were just making movies, endeavoring to entertain
ourselves,'' says John Gaeta, the films' visual-effects supervisor, ``when
we accidentally happened upon the technology that the story seems to be
about.''

That may sound slightly less ominous than Robert Oppenheimer's quotation
from the Bhagavad-gita -- ``I am become death: the destroyer of worlds'' --
after the detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1945. (The test was
code-named ``Trinity,'' by the way, the name of one of the movies' most
aggressive characters.) But like Oppenheimer, Gaeta says the filmmakers
``wouldn't have stopped because we were afraid of the potential for bad. We
just want to get to the cool and the good.''

The cool and the good were mostly absent from the science fiction of the
late 20th century, when the future was most often seen as dystopian. ``The
Truman Show'' explored the idea of life as a smiley-faced virtual reality in
1998, but the Wachowskis have created a more complex cauldron of ideas, in
which action is often secondary to philosophical musings. There is even a
growing shelf of books with titles such as ``Taking the Red Pill: Science,
Philosophy & Religion in `The Matrix,' '' in which the questions raised by
the movies are as important as the answers.

``These sort of fictions are telling us something,'' says Erik Davis, author
of ``Techgnosis,'' a book about technology and spirituality. ``They are
encouraging us to look through the cracks, to see where the official story
breaks down.''

One of the paradoxes set up by ``The Matrix'' mythology is that the movies
can be enjoyed -- and dismissed -- as elegant science fiction by millions of
people who believe devoutly in a God whose existence they cannot
conclusively prove. Whether he will turn out to be the architect of an
operating system, and whether the real world proves a better place for Neo
-- for any of us -- remains to be seen.

In ``The Matrix Reloaded,'' a band of human rebels is preparing to attack
the machines -- an assault that will take place when ``The Matrix
Revolutions'' is released Nov. 5 -- from their base in the subterranean city
of Zion. There has been considerable speculation about what Zion would look
like. The one glimpse we got during the first movie of life without the
overlay of the Matrix made reality look like hell on earth.

``The world they inhabit is really nasty, whereas the Matrix is pretty
tasty,'' says Davis. ``Waking up and starting to question the virtual
realities that we're handed is not very pleasant, and in a lot of ways,
that's where we're at.

``People are living inside their little bubbles, desperately holding onto
their beliefs about how their world is constructed, about America's
virtual-reality dream of itself.''


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