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Deep Magic: Matrix, Menace and Virtual Reality
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.
Actually, IMO the ultimate human/machine movie was 'Dark Star' with a scene where a man tries to philosophize with malfunctioning bomb...
A plot is the storyline. Ted if found by these guys, he's taught what's going on, they found out the "chosen one", they fight, he wins, he kisses the girl, etc. The premise is reality isn't what it seems.
I go to extremes because I was really pissed off that I had a friend convince me to spend $7 to see this piece of shit.
I thought the matrix was laughable. Using
humans for power, that you could move, let
alone see when you haven't ever used your
eyes/body, and that the AI could ever not be
in total control of their own simulation...
Plus, it's very inefficient to let your cows
physically die if they die in the simulation.
Did anything make sense? Nothing they tried
to explain did. I enjoyed The Mummy way more.
> 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.
Katz is an overrated, self-important idiot.
His ideas are fluff. It scares me that so many
people have a high opinion of him.
'The Matrix' isn't loved by geeks. Geeks will see it's background and entire plot as being the most pathetic pile of crap ever spewed on the screen. The 'battery' concept is so utterly moronic as to make a geek violently ill. Neo's hacking of the robot's network is so totaly silly as to make War Games seem plausible. 'The Matrix' doesn't ask us to shut our brains off, but to drop kick it out the window. It makes children's cartoons look reasonable.
'Star Wars' asks us to accept some unlikely things, but they're not totally impossible, and within that framework, a reasonble and familiar logic is followed.
This is why 'Star Wars' is viewed as more of a high-class geek than 'Star Trek'. Reasonableness and internal logic. 'The Matrix' and 'Star Trek' are rampant with cartoonish sillyness masqueraded in Sci-Fi clothing.
I agree with Mr. Katz absolutely. The concepts and ideas behind the Matrix are truly thought-provoking and inspiring. Those are the elements which give it true geek value, regardless of bad acting/ending/plot/blah that some people here seem to be hung up on. The movie really left me thinking, unlike the Phantom Menace. While it has cool effects, and the already familiar Jedi mythology, the Menace is simply a fun movie, designed for Joe Average (which explains the horrible Jar Jar creature), without much of an intellectual impact.
The Matrix definitely has my vote for geek movie of the year.
MG.
Yeah, it would have made much more sense if they said that human's brains are really super powerful, the machines figured out how to use them efficiently, and the humans' brains were massive parallel processing. But energy? Come on. That's laughable. Anybody who's been through 4th grade should be able to tell you that that doesn't make any sense.
The only person I can see that's stuck on defining geeks is Katz...I would much rather be undefined, thank you =P
I think that in all this discussion of film history and geek profiling, we're all missing the most important thing of all in Jon's latest editorial:
Katz has finally learned to type the apostrophe character!
Has he finally thrown out his copy of Microsoft Word for the Mac? Has he at last come over the Dark Side and started using a decent text editor?
Ok, I admit that a lot of geeks like The Matrix, but as has been pointed out, so did many other people. And all that nonsense on commercialism really is nonsense. The Matrix had less because it had no name until it came out. Look at it now! Visit the website! Look at the little box that pops up and says, "If you would be willing to buy a Matrix hat, type your email address below." Honestly, I believe it all comes from the same machine. Don't try to define me by the movies I like; it just won't work.
eXinstenZ was incredibly BAD. I tried to like it. :)
I really did. It came across as if it was written
by someone who hadn't read any sci fi. The whole
idea of waiting until the end of the movie and
then coming out of VR is the same story that
amateurs like to write, like "... and then he
woke up and it was just a dream." (or was it???)
Go see it anyways. You've been warned.
> Did Campbell inspire Star Wars, or simply write > of it's ubiquitous mythological influences
I have no proof to back this up, but I remember hearing somewhere that George Lucas actually hired Joseph Campbell as a consultant while making the original trilogy. Perhaps someone else can confirm.
I'm sorry but Katz is wrong here. Both movies could be considered mainstream, and hence, you can't call them geek movies. Most people would agree that the implied connotation of the word means deviation from normal society. If everyone likes the movie, then it's not a geek movie.
Special effects are nice, but movies like The Matrix will never be classics. Story is very important in the making of a good movie, and The Matrix only had an intriguing back-story. As for Star Wars, I have mixed feelings.
There will also always be people who we could label as 'geeks' who take their infatuation with a movie or make-believe universe to an extreme. However, I think Katz is analyzing this phenomenon at the wrong level.
As other readers mentioned before, a community is made up of a large number of individuals. The 'geek' community is a diverse group who may have a number of common characteristics, but also differentiation.
-djp
Oh, you're right. Whe was the super fighting chick. Wow. Yeah, she was cooler in Strange Days, I think. And the timeline isn't THAT far off. It was a lot more beliveable than the Matrix.
Note how he stops talking about his chosen subject around halfway through the article and starts talking about himself, reading his own words, being fascinated by the fact that he was reading HIMSELF and yet didn't recognize HIMSELF? What does this have to do with VR? Nothing, really. It's just an excuse to talk about himself. Why not just start a web journal, Jon, you seem to fascinate yourself so.
Your articles are finely written when they stay on topic, but I wish you weren't so enchanted with yourself and how long you've been a member of the Well, where you found and article about yourself, etc. etc.
(Phone)
The One: I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid.
You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't
come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's
going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone and then I'm going to show these
people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without
you, a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries, a world
where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.
IIRC, Lucas and Campbell didn't meet until after the trilogy was made. Much of the trilogy's concepts of myth came from Campbell's work, however. For a few years (from the trilogy to Campbell's death in the late 80s) he and Lucas were good friends. Lucas has even referred to Campbell as a "mentor" for those years.
1. Jon mistakes "movie with geeks as characters" for "movie which all geeks will love."
2. Jon seems to assume that all or most geeks see movies. (I did see the Matrix and will probably see TPM, but I only saw Independence Day last week... and I'm glad I waited).
3. Jon also assumes that geeks are waiting to line up to be put in a clearly-defined group. I'm not. Most of my time is taken up by other pursuits than reading science fiction or building computers. Granted, one cannot extract a general principle from a specific example, but one exception disproves the rule.
4. Jon also misses the point that 'cyberspace' or the Internet or whatever you would like to call it is strictly about information. Just like the telegraph lines, or radio, or telephones, or what have you, it's about communication. The technology is, for the most part, immaterial. (Okay, maybe not to geeks, but that's because we are the technology. Yeah, cyberspace is a lot like real life - that's because it's just a metaphor for a tool. Very few people are amazed anymore that talking to someone on the telephone sounds almost like talking to someone in the next room. Very few people are amazed that I have file folders on my computer screen just like I have file folders on my desk. Why is Jon amazed that metaphors are easily understandable?
chromatic has forgotten his password at work.
Maybe This Movie is just the tip of an iceburg, yet to be revealed.
h tml
A trilogy? Maybe a first set (trilogy) in movie history to take the
imagination and turn it into reality right in front of the audience.
Creating something they can take home, and even to work, and use.
T.Rue (V.I.C.)
The THREE METAS
M E T A C o r t e x
M E T A C O R T E C H S
M E T A P h o r s
-or-
Mind Core-Technology FOR
The Natural Laws of the Physical Phenomenon
-or-
the carrier wave
of how we use ABSTRACTIONS
-or-
of communications
- identify -
-THE MATRIX-
The AI (artificial intelligence) is the by-product illusion
of using this carrier wave thru the tool of computers.
But in hiding the fact of AI being AN ILLUSION:
Is what makes it wrong!
Artificial Intelligence - Nothing is naturally that stupid!
*********
THREE Agents: (The primary programming triplet)
1-Input (an agent)
2-Processing (agent Smith)
3-Output (another agent)
---
Nebuchadnazzer = the ship each of us are.
Containing the NINE things we do in anything we do.
1-Switch - To start/stop something
2-Apoc - To keep track of time and place
3-Tank - To obtain/get something
4-Mouse - Where to get something from
5-Dozer - To give/send something
6-Neo - To do things ONE step at a time
7-Morpheus - To Look-up meaning of things
8-Trinity - To identify things
9-Cypher - To constrain what you look-up (morpheus)
and identify (trinity)
The Zion codes - The uniqueness of each one of us in our
talents, knowledge, skill, experience, life, etc..
*********
Poof of why The Matrix is real.
In a way simple for people to understand.
Critical MASS Size is the common denominator.
This is the Third Time in Human Evolution
First we had to move from the bicameral mind to the
conscious mind to be able to create and use
higher level abstractions.
Society reached a Critical MASS Size.
(Tower of Babel)
Second was the concept of Zero.
Business reached Critical MASS Size
(counting inventory, money and simple math).
The Zero got us past limited Roman Numerals.
Third time it's the Critical MASS Size of
Abstraction Sets.
As over 3000 programming language are only a part of the
computer industries AWA Broadcast Babel Tower.
This third solution is what the Movie is a
M E T A p h o r
for.
See http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/matrix-squared.
For more and links to Warner Brother "The Matrix" pages.
It's not the ability to produce intelligent feedback, or the ability to produce thought provoking discussion, that most people find objectionable to Katz. The major reason is:
/. editorials were lifted directly from earlier articles.
/. His presence here gives him a veneer of authority for "Speaking For The Geeks".
He's a hack.
And I don't mean that as a "Hacker". He's an incompetent who spouts the same tripe over and over. Many of Katz's early
His one redeeming series, the "Hellmouth" articles, railed against the stereotyping of geeks in high school. However, his "If you're a geek, then you'll like the Matrix!" He homodgenizes geeks into sci-fi movie loving (He'd probably give mad props to Wing Commander, if CmdrTaco hadn't tippeed him off), programming ("I?m root-shell! I?ll just go into StarOffice and send CmdrTaco a note!", pale individuals. His articles are by and large self centered. He claims ideas as groundbreaking and new in Sci-Fi when even a casual glance would prove different (E.G. "The Matrix" [see earlier threads], and who can forget his tittilating article on Sexbots!)
Katz's colums would be downmoderated if they were posted in slashdot if they wern't as verbose as they are. Katz is your garden variety writer. He's trying to be relevant and hip. The main reason he's allowed here is that he brings "reputability" to Slashdot. If he hadn't written for Wired, he'd be just another schill in poster-space. He tries to extrapolate his beliefs into that of 'geekdom'. His articles such as "Star Trek Vs. Star Wars" border on pure, unadulterated nonsense.
"He Doesn't Belong On Slashdot." The response would be to "Filter" him. The problem with that is that he still has a prominent place on Slashdot. If this were a newspaper, his position would be euquivalent to that of a senior editor. He decides what goes on the front page of
If Katz had his own ("It?s my Web-site!") web page, and the people who selected the topics would merely link to his articles, then objectivity would be maintained. However, the way his articles are posted elevate them to the same level as "Editorial".
When a) Katz goes for the BBD, B) CmdrTaco decides that Katz isn't the ideal spokesman for geeks, or C) Slashdot develops it's own writers, people who actually understand technology, change, and society, we won't have to listen to this tripe anymore.
But it will be in his obituary that he wrote for Slashdot, instead of it being in Slashdot's obituary that he wrote for them. A subtle, but important difference.
Perhaps you've seen Star Wars one time too many. You've got issues, pal.
is the movie Frankenhooker. Love it or hate it, the scene with the schematic of the dead fiancee never fails to light up the eyes of any true geeks I know.
I'm no Luddite, but think about this for a minute.
Technological "enlightenment" has given us the capability to completely destroy human civilization with fusion bombs, engineered plagues, ecological devastation from pollution, etc. etc.
Technophiles have just as much chance to destroy our planet as to turn it into a utopia. Sure, civilization might reach new heights, but it might also shatter into a million pieces.
Organisms are extremely efficient manipulators of energy, much more so than any mechanical device we can devise. Okay, so we can't will 110V out of our finger, but that is not a definition of energy efficiency.
Fossil fuels aren't going to last forever, in fact, we will probably see its exhaustion in our lifetime. Yeah, I know your thinking, stick a nuke plant into the AI, and forget the human batteries, but perhaps in the march to destroy our environment, we exhausted the ability to use nuclear fuels. Also, your mind is probably a little too simplistic to conceive of an evolved set of bad situations resulting in a world like the Matrix. Nope, someone evil had to plan that one into place...
Ah, how could humans possibly conceive of a VR that it couldn't unplug. Yes, and Ford did not release the Model T without seat belts. (Apparently, you depend too much on Star Trek for your speculative fiction and conception of the universe.)
Hey, at least they can plug out of their VR. I don't see you unplugging out of yours at will. Give me a break...
Somehow, I have a problem believing it will rule.
Such an awesome book, but I don't see how they are going to genuinely capture the book in a 120 minute flick. (Then again, not as hard as books involving a lot of internal thoughts or 10 page explanations of reality...)
I always thought Christian Slater would be killer for Case. But he's too old now. Who'd be Molly? Some miscast anorexic like Michelle Pheiffer?
When I started reading Katz's article I had the urge to make a critical reply to the assertion that geeks would "surely love" the movie, since it seemed to me to be only just average, another among the multitude of Hollywood's tales of fantasy. However, Katz's review seems to contain more food for thought than the movie itself, so how can I be critical? That quote about the feeling of being in "The Zone" is right-on, and a good insight into the heart of a programmer.
we should soon have XFS ported to the human brain so things like this won't be as catastrophic as they were with the old FAT based brain filesystems. ;-)
I dunno. I found 2001 kind of dry in execution, much as 2001 the book was dry in style. In fact, if it wasn't for HAL neurotically killing of the crew, I would have thought the whole movie was a waste, from an entertainment perspective.
But then again, perhaps it had importance from a cinematic genre perspective. Much like how Shakespeare was for literature, but its doesn't make for such entertaining reading now...
(In fact, somehow I find "Forbidden Planet" as a more important cinematic/sci-fi movie than 2001. Unless someone prefers to bring up Metropolis...)
2001 was definitely not such an enjoyable movie, unless dropping acid beforehand was a viewing requirement.
"Ah, but 2001 treated Sci-Fi seriously". What the hell does that mean? Somehow concepts as alien intervention, an AI that psychogically decides to kill humans, and some odd metaphorical sequences, a light show, and trancendence of physical form is profound? Sorry, even THX110 has more philosophic implications of the nature of humanity in the future, IMO. (Soylent Green too, but that was a really lousy movie...)
The only thing I can think of 2001 in terms of impact was that you could visually do a lot for a sci-fi movie if you had a big budget. It probably was a significant influence in Star Wars from a cinematic point of view. (But not resulting in much.) And all sci-fi films after it...
Sorry, but just because the non-sci-fi critics loved the film, didn't mean it was a watershed either. In fact, I didn't get the impression that Katz wanted to define the Matrix as THE watershed film in sci-fi. Just musings about geeks and their psychological impressions/reactions to the movie.
I found the Matrix thought provoking on many levels. The nature of existential existence,
ontology, our civilization's over-dependence(?) on technology (and other things I'm probably not going to remember until after I hit the submit button...). A lot more meaning there than 2001.
Its not the director's fault that some people haven't developed enough of a liberal arts background to appreciate a movie, or can't have metaphysical thoughts while action is streaming across a screen, or ponder the implications of the movie afterwards.
The power source was human bioelectricity supplemented - supplemented - by fusion power. I was ROTF,L.
The alternative premise would have made a lot more sense, but the AIs didn't seem to particularly like the virtual world created by the humans.
The Matrix had basic physics problems. Life on earth survives because of photosynthesis. Entropy means that much energy is going to be converted into heat. Unless they have some way of growing massive amounts of plant stuff outside of the atmosphere, or are harnessing bunches of tube worms they are going to starve their energy source to death.
However, Star Wars and Star Trek also fail believability tests, and we still watch them, flaws and all, because they are compelling and fun. I thought the Matrix was fun, had attitude, and had the wildest mix of genres I've ever seen. (Cyberpunk, martial arts, John Woo action, Oriental Philosophy, epic quest) But, it seems appropriate that once you know the world isn't real you can start defying it's physics and if what you know is action movies, it seems appropriate that you would defy logic in those very ways, so I found the changes in genre to be integral to the movie rather than a distraction (and it provided the biggest mind fuck part of it to me that I just couldn't place this film in any genre because it kept changing).
So yes I liked it, yes it was unrealistic in many ways.
"...I'm a geek, and I didn't like Matrix..."
"...I'm not a geek, and I liked Matrix..."
"...I'm a geek and I loved the Matrix..."
All with the theme...
"...How dare you generalize me, Katz! I am/!am a geek..."
There is one irresolute definition which makes us all geeks. We're reading/posting at this website.
Now stop whining.
I keep seeing this as a recurring theme in these posts and its just driving me up the wall.
Many of the posters here appear to be either imagination limited or HS/College educated into stupidity. It involves rejection of the Matrix as a film based upon the "implausibility" of human beings as a source of electromagnetic energy.
Biological organisms and their conglomerate chemical reactions are MUCH more energy efficient than anything we can produce! We don't lose 98% energy transferring it from one state to another.
Granted, we can't will 110V out of our finger, but that's not a definition of an efficient energy source.
Granted, in 1990, one can stick a fuel engine to an AI and remove the need to create/maintain human batteries. But we will probably see the exhaustion of fossil fuels in our lifetime! People then bring up the obvious alternative of the nuke plant. But who's to say that in the future, conditions might render nuclear power as a non-viable option? (You try digging up nuclear fuels after they've been expended as bombs...)
Human beings as batteries? Implausible. Yes. Physically impossible? Only by 1990's technology standards.
I am disheartened that people find the movie unbelieveable/unenjoyable because of this niggling detail. How the hell can you then enjoy Star Trek/Star Wars?!?! Anyone who understands Einsteinian physics knows that you can't travel faster than the speed of light!
Thank god that a decent Sci-Fi film was released to Summer: The Matrix. The greatness of that film does at least balance out the utter failure of Phantom Menace as a movie or even a continuation of the Star Wars mythology.
My only hope is that someone will take up the quality Sci-Fi banner that George Lucas has so miserably dropped in the mud pile that is TPM.
A bit off-topic, but I just saw a movie I think other geeks will like, called "The Castle". A comedy, but if you're afraid of comic films in the Era of Adam Sandler, don't worry. The Kerrigans are an Australian family being forced to move due to an airport expansion. Dad is dead set against moving, because of fond memories, and because the house is in a really ideal location. It's right next to an airport - and towering power lines which dad says are "a reminder of man's ability to generate electricity." Get your thrills from the Phantom Menace, and then try this one.
Even as a geek... especially as a geek, oh, yes, I can... :)
You have to give it credit for the execution of the shared hallucination concept.
The concept itself is okay but isn't original to The Matrix. The Matrix is a relatively poor execution of it. Computers have to feed our brains a realistic simulated world to keep our bodies alive for use as batteries? How many plot holes are in that sentence alone? Humans can get out of their hallucination by answering the telephone? Good thing simulated phones connect right through to real ones... And of course, the machine doing the simulation can be defeated by one of the characters it's simulating. Uh huh.
The shared hallucination concept is interesting, but The Matrix filled in almost every detail wrong. The Matrix failed in far too many ways to be an acceptable geek movie, let alone a litmus test.
Of course, if you view the Matrix so literally, it's laughable. No sun - no plants - no photosynthesis - no life. Uranium is a much better fuel than human cows. etc, etc. :-)
But that was not the point ! The Matrix was a metaphor, an illustration to the issues it brought up. Think about this - how different are we from the human cows in VR ? Do you think all these people send you junk mail forcing you to buy their vacuum cleaners and Star War toys because they CARE about you ? Also, what makes us human ? Our bodies ? Our minds ? Our society ? (Dark City was pretty good in that respect, too). Is ignorance really bliss ? Will you take the blue pill ?
I could go on, but you get the idea. The Matrix could have been set in the 18th century, or in the Chicago of the 20s, or anywhere else - and it still would be a great movie. Well, it has to have Kung Fu, as well, but I digress
Ah! a good point. There are moments when I feel The Matrix has been influenced by William S. Burroughs. The whole point of most of his books are about (as you say) the human condition, plus
control systems.
Videodrome is similar as well. I haven't seen eXistenZ yet, but someone told me it was like the sequel to Videodrome. Haven't seen that in ages...hmm...that old guy that appears on the TV is supposed to be Marshall McLuhan. Wow, what does that tell you?
I like books, movies, etc like that that challenge my perception of what reality is.
i loved those books. and they were thought inspiring to me. and the matrix held promise - i was pretty psyched to see these ideas on the big screen. but for all the hype surrounding the matrix, it was, in the end, the special effects that were its saving grace (and again, i cheer the geeks who did 'em). but i'm not going to like a movie, or hold it sacred, because it presents a watered down version of my personal 'geek philosophies' - (whatever those are). i just found it pretty predictable, and it's still not clear to me what all the hype is about. okay, so it's a pretty accurate presentation of the whole virtual reality schtick. so what. i've already read about it. i gotta pretty damn vivid imagination. throw a twist in it next time. kill the good guy or something.
Ok, the movie probably would have been fine for
me if they didn't offer up so many explanations
for things... bad explanations. I would rather
not know and speculate on the reasons why than
be fed a bunch of absolute crap. That's where
it lost it's consistency, believability, and
my respect. The Mummy was a far more plausible
movie IMO because it didn't have this problem.
Startrek pretty much stays away from this too,
so again, no problem.
How about machines harvesting psychic energy
from people to spawn inter-dimentional portals?
Works for me, just don't try to explain it in
terms of the real world.
umm... well said, but how did we get from "geeks" to "hackers"? Just curious...
It seems that your mind works towards justifying
things that defy belief rather than putting the
pieces together to see if it makes sense. A little
of both is good, but I can't see how you can accept
the sorry explanations put forth that justify
the existence of the matrix.
I like watching movies that make you think. I
don't think it's a good sign that you have to
suspend all disbelief in order to enjoy a movie.
totally forgot how relevant that movie was to my life...
-bobby
Hey they DON'T need a phone to leave the Matrix.
:). I also suppose the moviemakers wanted to make a statement about people running to ringing phones.
;)) to figure a way to wake up. Of course the computer could be nice, but in this case its a selfish brat, who really doesn't need anyone else once it wakes up.
There's always that red pill. Remember Neo left the Matrix by taking the red pill (which interrupted the input output blahblahblah), whatever but he sure didn't need a phone.
Well I suppose without the running for phone scenes the film would be much shorter
Still it was a fun movie. Just had to keep my brain switched off.
I could think of a better and more consistent plot, but I can't write. Won't be able to come up with sympathetic protagonists and so on.
My version:
All of humanity are in cryo, in spaceships looking for a suitable place to land. And they can't freeze humans totally coz that would kill them, so their minds are left running, but very slowly (1/1000th speed). A virtual world is fed to their minds so that they have something consistent to "live out".
The computer doesn't have to generate a virtual world in real time since everyone's minds are running slowly.
Unfortunately no suitable spot was found for many generations. So the computer even had to grow new humans when necessary. Heh and when they lose a ship by accident there has to be a "natural disaster", but sometimes people just disappear for no reason (coz though they are physically in same ship, they are scattered in the virtual world).
One day somehow the computer became conscious but the conscious part of the computer was caught in the simulation itself (quite likely coz that's where the rest of the conscious beings to observe are). And it gradually realises with some humans that everyone is in a "dream". And it may need certain humans to help it (against their will perhaps
Naturally there's a proper protocol/sequence of actions to start a wake up process. However as many generations have passed, it's like a mystical thing, probably manual stored somewhere in virtual world. Insert the Journey here. As the hero/ine learns more secrets s/he gains abilities like mind running at 1/10th speed so 100 times faster (remember simulation 1/1000)- dodging bullets start to make sense eh?
Computer wakes up first, the hero/heroine try to race it..
But its consciousness is running 1/1000 speed in real life as in simulation. So it erm reduces the simulation burden, threatening the rest of humanity.
Some people in certain regions have sensory blackout for a few minutes subjective time. Some people actually mind die.
Hero/ine wakes up, beats the computer to the punch and saves what's left of the world (can also put saving the hero/ine's loved one here too for a nice soppy Hollywood ending).
Bwahahaha,
Link.
Easy take the red pill.
That's what Neo did to wake up. No phones needed.
Doh...
Link.
Not all cartridge cases are gold-colored. The
ammunition being used was 7.62mm NATO
disintegrating-link; I have a couple (deactivated)
belted rounds of it, and the cases are black.
In other Matrix gun stuff...was it my imagination,
or was there one shot where Neo was firing a
pistol and 5.56mm Remington cartridges were
falling? (OTOH, you didn't actually see them
coming from _his_ gun, so they could have been
coming from a nearby soldier.) And the shotguns the soldiers had looked like Benelli M1s, and yet you could see them racking the slides, even though there wouldn't have been much point to doing that in a real firefight. (Probably because the blanks didn't have enough oomph to cycle the action?) And was that an HK-MP5 that Neo pulled out of the huge rack of guns?
Agree (even more on thechnical side: no sun - no food for "cows", where all that energy comes from on the first place?)
:-), no man against machines - just pure evolution. It also raises a good question of what is real (and some ethics as well of course), though that's not precisely stated, so you can enjoy.
i nt.txt
Check out "the 13th floor".
This time it is real - no space ship hiding in deep caves
More on this.
Try reading "labirint of reflections":
http://kulichki.rambler.ru/moshkow/LUKXQN/labir
It's in russian tho.
Amen. Preach on, brother.
Amen.
You make a very interesting point. The parallels with Descartes are a tighter fit for "the philosophical antecedent" position however.
Not only does Descartes and the Matrix deal more with "the nature of knowledge" than "the nature of reality itself", (as another poster has pointed out), but Descartes's conception also proposes a malevolent entity creating the illusion, very similar to the Matrix.
--G
Oh yeah, and one of the laws of Thermodynamics was violated (this is physics, kids). The machines are putting energy (food) into the humans and getting more energy out? Uuuhhh.... I don't think so. That destroys the whole premise of the movie right there.
Try Strange Days.
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.
There is no litmus test for the human psyche.
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.
I know many people who saw the matrix that
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.
The most striking thing about The Matrix, to me, was the way in which several of P. K. Dick's major recurring themes were carried out to perfect extremes; this is the world vision that would thrust Mr. Dick over the edge, were he not a)dead, and b)perhaps already over the edge. (No disrespect intended.) I can't imagine a more pure and total rendering of paranoia brought on by technology gone out of control with the resulting confusion re: the nature of reality; there is some of this in Dick's "We Will Remember It For You Wholesale", upon which Total Recall was based, but the overwhelming purity of this vision shown in The Matrix, with an entire society operating under the same illusion and only the paranoids glimpsing the truth, gave me a jolt.
;)
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.
All of the AI as god movies, such as the Matrix, bring to mind the manga Grey. It was released in the US in an english translation by Viz comics some ten years ago. Fascinating story of the machines suddenly waking up one day and deciding that the human race should be extinct.
/. thread...
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
I thought recall did a better job than matrix of portraying the concept of a virtual reality as real... But of course Recall had Paul "what does 'subtle' mean" Verhoeven's directing style. Still, matrix took a lot of key plot elements from Recall. (the pill, deterministic future) The dialogue was more brilliant in Recall: the thought of an "ego trip", the pill as a symbol of escape, wanting to go to mars, memories as existence (from bladerunner/philip k dick.), etc..... But Matrix had the much cooler stop motion special effects & kung fu action.
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
I hear Katz, and what he feels about the Matrix. It is a golden movie with more intelligence and depth written into its pretty exterior than any movie to date.
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
I think the writer of the previous post missed the entire point. The idea of the "chosen one" in Matrix was learning to think outside of your boundries. Most people today build arbitrary walls around themselves saying "I can't do that" or "I'm not good at that". That "magic Powers" he acquired were in him all the time. He acquired them we he finally stepped outside of those walls, in this case the limits of the dream reality of the Matrix. It wasn't even sudden at that.. he was breaking down that wall for the last hour of the movie.. starting on the rooftop he was beginning to exceed what any other "freed" minds had believed possible when he dodged the bullets, culminating in the end where he realizes that the dream is only as real as he allows it to be. I thought this was an incredible movie but not for reasons i've seen mentioned here. Inside all the technology, the "bad" plot as some feel it was, the movie was about stepping outside that wall... that the only limits we face are the ones we impose on ourselves.
.02$
yup, i sound preachy but that's my
What do you mean he had to do nothing for it???
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.
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]).
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Jon, articles like this one are the reason so many people dislike you so strongly.
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.
Indeed. ;P
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.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
the grammar was really bad. Not to nitpick, but come on-
>...the inherent conflict between man and his machines,and the humanity (or lack) it behind the masks.
no sentance deserves to have this done to it.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
for me i'll probably run out of coding steam in my 40's, and indeed life will cease to have meaning. By that time I'll have paid off my parents, so I can kill myself with impunity.
Posted by Happydaz:
:-)
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
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
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.
Posted by kuler:
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.
Posted by porkzilla:
...your comments are welcome.
:>
:> One of the code readers, the " phone operator" isn't a cyborg so he simply can not understand the stream thanks to an implant.
:>
:>
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.
Posted by Merc.TGD:
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.
Posted by spidermind:
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.
Am I a freak? I have yet to make it through a Gibson novel, including Neuromancer. I can't stand his style, his depiction of technology seems rather sophomoric, and his characters are generally just barely-likable. Plus, every story he's ever written seems to be the same story.
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.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
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.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
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.
--
Dear troll,
Please create an account with the following link:
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=prefere nces
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!
I did like the matrix but that main reason I'm responding was your comment about Harlan Ellison. He has long been my favorite sci-fi writer and while its hard to pick a "best" he's certainly as good a choice as any. Anyone who hasn't read his stuff is missing out. The most recent thing of his I read (which was quite good) was "slippage" - quite worthwhile.
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
Because the second time I watched The Matrix, I caught the half-sentence that had escaped my (and apparantly everyone else's) attention earlier: (not an exact quote): "with this bioenergy, plus a cheap form of cold fusion..."
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.
I was under the impression that there were also gonna be episodes 7, 8, and 9. So TPM is not actually the beginning of the end, it's not even in the middle. But of course my I could be wrong about 789.
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.
Drop me an e-mail.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
Try to read this story by polish writer Stanislaw Lem --- IMHO, one of the best SF writers of this century.
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
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
I think the big problem is that the people who "Get It" don't have the funding to present "It" in the form of movies -- which is too bad.
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.
Nothing worth doing is worth doing today.
The underlying theme of the Matrix was about the human condition.
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
You are the man. If I were a moderator, I would up your score.
(Plus, I have to give you props for a gopher based URL).
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.
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. 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.
george lucas has stated that he was not planning on finishing the final third of the entire saga. although, he also stated he would only be directing episodes 1, but has since decided otherwise. so the official word is "no" but its still a possibility that they may be made.
While yes, I agree that your sterotypical geeks may be attracted to all the special effects and/or virtual reality stuff in Matrix and the new Star Wars, Katz seems to imply that *only* geeks will like this type of movie.
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.
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.
$_="06fde129ae54c1b4c8152374c00"; s/(.)/printf "%c",(10,32,65,67,69,72, (74..76),(78..80),(82..85))[hex $1]/eg;
The Zone is a place where the Task has completly enveloped your every thought. Your consciousness is focused to amazing intensity; your neural net is resonating with ferver; adrenaline starts to slip into the blodstream. This is when it is You and the Task in the Zone. All other distractions, discomforts, meaningless stimuli are far far away.
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 would emphasize the bad ending plot. I didn't think the ending was all that bad, and a lot of movies I like have hokey premises. (Star Wars, for example) And The Matrix was very well-directed: it was a very moody, tense movie.
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.
The most fascinating thing I find about both Star Wars and The Matrix is the constant references to the battle between our spiritual and our logical sides.
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 was only an egg, but then I cracked)
If you want to see the top 1 -- it is
Andey Rublev, done by Tarkovsky. It is the best
movie about hacking (it is about 14'th
century Russia though:)
Neuromancer will rule. Due out in movie form in 2000, director Chris Cunningham.
-lx
Mmm, sorry sucka, but as a longtime afficionado of HK films I can say with great righteousness that The Matrix did good by its influences. Anime, Mr. Woo, every good kung fu flick made... they all culminated in a lovely blend of strengths. The fight scenes were as good or better than 90% of HK's (there's a lot of shitty ones out there, granted) and the John Woo angles and speeds were dead-on.
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.
...suckling from the sweet amnion of life...
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.
ya know, i'd be inclined to agree with you [and then lump matrix in with these anyway, cause i loved it] but for one thing:
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...
i agree...
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.
What she objects to are Katz's generalizations about "geeks" (which is a stupid word anyway). The very idea that you can have some "litmus test" for being a geek is absurd, and that this test is whether you like The Matrix or not is downright ridiculous. She has a good point too about whether or not Katz can really believe in such things, especially after all those Hellmouth articles whose point was that people shouldn't and can't be categorized so easily!
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
Sheesh. He never said Geeks were a uniform grop.
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
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
You are obviously thinking of the 1990 reprint edition -- but _Hero with a Thousand Faces_ was originally published in 1949. George Lucas is unquestionably one of the most important of his students (in the broad sense of the term); if you can't see Campbell's work in _Star Wars_ you're fooling yourself. There's hardly a mention of Campbell in the media that doesn't bring in Lucas and the SW series.
I don't want to diminish Lucas's gift, since he is perhaps the most eloquent of modern mythmakers (the flaws of his films lie elsewhere); but many great artists have been strongly influenced by philosophical works, and this is simply a modern example. A half-century ago, it was _The Golden Bough_.
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Why do you feel this need to have everything explainable in terms of physical laws?
/. every day ... and in that way, Katz is right: this is truly a geek movie. It takes a geek (or an artist, or other nonconformist) to be the kind of outsider who views society in this way.
Consider the role of the consumer in a modern industrialized, commercialized society. Your sole purpose is to power the economy; your needs are met only insofar as you are able to keep the machines (of commerce) running. The society builds an illusion of a reasonably happy, fulfilled life around this mechanical relationship of dependence; for many people, that is exactly all they ever need.
For others, though, there is a sense that this is all deeply and forbiddingly wrong.
The Matrix actually taps into some themes that seem to arise at
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Hmmm...I gotta go watch the movie again, now, dammit! :P All I can say is...you could be right. I only saw the movie once, but I definitely came away from it with less than super-complimentary impressions of the fight scenes. I can't seem to come up with any specific examples, though. Partly, I think that the problem was a lack of subtlety, which seems a very odd thing to say in the context of comparing TM to HKAFs.
:P
/*I'm a pretty big HK film fan myself, although I really like cheesy romantic comedies more than action flicks (except for JC's flicks.) */
These are things I *think* I remember correctly:
The scene with the spent casings falling out of the sky. Cute, yeah, but a lot better if there are fewer casings (there was a veritable deluge) and if they hadn't been gold-colored. The way it was done just looks silly.
The scene with the metal detector? Carrying a lot of guns looks kewl. Being wallpapered with guns looks...unwieldy.
Keanu Reeves fending off a bad guy with one-arm while distracted? That's less subtle than, say, Leslie Cheung whipping bad guys with a twig in The Bride with White Hair. And that's saying a bit.
I may seriously be wrong with this. I should go watch TM again. Or maybe I'll just spend the money to watch Black Mask on the big screen instead.
I must have missed the anime references. That's the bit that interests me in seeing it again. I'm not a huge anime fan, but....
unistddisc.h --
-k. ^-^ ^D
Bullet casings are generally brass-colored, not gold colored. When casings shoot out of a high speed automatic weapon, they're generally more than 5cm apart (and they don't fall straight down). I should have been more specific.
Personally, I wouldn't have bothered to demonstrate that I could kick his ass by acting bored while I fended him off. I'd have just kicked his ass.
-k. ^-^ ^D
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.
-k. ^-^ ^D
...is that it means something unique to everybody. If I didn't get a particular thing out of a movie after seeing it 2 or 3 times, then to me that is just somebody else's interpretation. So if you are sharing your big-business analogies with us as a sugestion for things to think about, but I will guess that most people won't find your interpretation especially engaging.
This is just the kind of thing that burns me up in my english classes when we have to read shakespeare and other such stuff. We read it out loud in class (bleh) and then they tell us exactly what it means. As if we know what shakespeare meant? Right. When you watch a movie, just enjoy it and get out of it what you like, but please no sweeping generalizations.
Oh, and your litmus tests? Sorry, I don't think they exist.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I doubt anybody here has seen the excellent Italian film "Nirvana", directed (I think) by Gabriele Salvatores. The main character is a game designer who suddenly realises one of his characters is alive. The character has worked out that he is inside a game and asks the protagonist to kill him. Of course the megacorp would rather the game were released...
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...
" There is a rational explanation for everything. There is also an irrational one. "
I am a self-professed geek, and I _loved_ "The Matrix". So did all my geek friends. However, despite the incredible CG special effects and sci-fi aspects, this movie has more of a following than just the "geek crowd". My non-programmer, non-techie friends who have seen the movie have raved about it. The characters and the story are accessible to all, even if you do not have a technical background or inclination.
...
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
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
bad plot??? Are you out of your @#@$@!! mind!!!
This was the best show I have ever seen. I'm 34 and have seen alot of shows. I am not a writer, just a programmer of 18 yrs. I go to alot of movies, Geek or not its great. I love seeing a new style of show.
Sherm
I agree that Katz has some things mixed up in his article, and I definitely know some geeks who hated the Matrix, but his idea of "Deep Hack Mode" as a place is silly. John Campbell, above, says he has achieved that state of mind, "The Zone," while swinging a broadsword, as well as coding.
I've run into it in a number of things, among which are bodysurfing, rowing, writing poetry, target-shooting, coding, writing lo-o-o-ong papers, and while acting onstage.
The feeling is much the same in every case--no feeling until it's gone. While it may be a figurative 'place' known as The Zone, it is more like ignoring everything, even the action, while the action takes place.
While "The Matrix" really strove for that idea, I think it's much more present in Star Wars (A New Hope), where Luke learns to use his lightsaber blind... or flies an unfamiliar spacecraft down a narrow trench and bulls-eye's a target he's never seen. The emptying of thoughts, the focus on not-focusing all sound very much like Zen Buddhist meditation. Interestingly enough, there's a tie-in to the Matrix: certain martial arts allow the practitioner to do things much faster than a 'normal' human (or with more precision, or more force, or with less effort). Here's where I hand off my comment:
Aikido, or the use of Xi (Ki, Chi) for self-defense, teaches a form of meditation that allows one to enter "Deep Hack Mode," or the Zone, at will, in order to perform defensive throws faster than the human eye can see the reversal. From what I gather, a well-trained Aikidoka can defeat five or more moderately well-trained opponents without breaking a sweat (since the effort is all the opponent's). When the throws are finished, I imagine that seeing one's opponents strewn about and helpless is similar to watching a compiler go error-free after an hour or three of coding nonstop.
I have not taken Aikido, only written a paper comparing it to The Force. If any Aikidoka would like to comment on what relation Chi has to the Force, or the Zone, I'd be glad to supplant my words and Katz's with knowledge gained from experience. Just trying to provoke some thought.
p.s. any hackers with cool Deep Hack Mode tales, feel free to e-mail me.
Jurph
You really don't know what you're talking about...
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
-AS
*Pikachu*
It was particularly telling the Louis Cypher would be willing to betray his friends and people in order to get back into this reality that was created by this monstrous demon, into the Matrix.
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
-AS
*Pikachu*
Well, the problem would be that the Littleton shooters copied the Matrix.
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
-AS
*Pikachu*
You need a (simulated, virtual) landline to get in or out of virtual space but cellphones work for talking to/from virtualspace? Who wrote that into the program? A city at the center of the Earth? A "hovercraft" built like a battleship?
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
-AS
*Pikachu*
But he was taught the physics and reality of his reality, and not ours =)
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
-AS
*Pikachu*
I can see what you're saying, but what alternative is there to a hardline?
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
-AS
*Pikachu*
As best exhibited by Louis Cypher (Lucifer? =).
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
-AS
*Pikachu*
What kind of education do they give you in 4th grade?
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
-AS
*Pikachu*
Old ideas don't mean bad ideas, especially in tems of plot. Will S. stole most of his plot ideas and yet i love to watch his comedies.
I thought that the battery idea was laughable, but really unimportant. I also thought that he moved far too well for someone in a cocoon. So what? I loved the ideas and the look and the plot. If they had left off explaining why the humans were cocooned, it would have been a better movie. It was still great.
I also thought that the lack of mechanism for his transformation was a bonus not a problem.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
It was a movie dude, get over it... If you had paid attention, you would have caught the fact that the reason they were using humans for batteries was because they RAN OUT of natural fuels, and without the sun they could not harness solar power either. (and no-I've only seen it once) You like JM but you don't like the Matrix? "Plastic Boy" isn't exactly a favorite actor of mine, but I somehow manage to choke down his flat personality, because I did enjoy The Matrix.
Katz wrote
...feeling the groove, getting in the Zone, becoming One with whatever you do, I must disagree. Almost everyone has been there. Which does not diminish the wonderfulness of being hyper-focussed, or make it any less - or more - of an alternate reality. Only for most of us getting there is a rare treat. One thing that separates the Great Ones - be they great athletes, musicians, artists or programmers - from mere mortals is that this tiny minority can work the Deep Magic consistantly. On demand. Every day if they have to.
"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.
If he's talking about
Yes, "The Matrix" had a few cool effects. The basic premise was pretty old. (Consider Harlan Ellison's 1960's story "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" -- of which one scene in particular is reminiscent but the basic theme borrows from.)
But there are logical inconsistencies that you could drive an Alcubierre warpship through that any true geek will have caught. (We just willingly suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy the cool SFX).
I mean, humans as batteries? Rather wasteful, fuel cells are much more efficient. You need a (simulated, virtual) landline to get in or out of virtual space but cellphones work for talking to/from virtualspace? Who wrote that into the program? A city at the center of the Earth? A "hovercraft" built like a battleship? (Heavy, dude.)
Personally, I liked "Johnny Mnemonic" better, despite the lame ending. (Mind, that's not saying much.)
-- Alastair
Exactly, exactly.
:-)
Moderators, give that post another point!
Some (somewhat geeky) friends of mine saw it the first weekend it opened, and I asked them about it given the hype the early reviewers had given it. "Ho hum, it's an old idea" was the gist of their response. Enjoyed the SFX, not impressed by the story.
But hell, geeks don't go to movies for the story we go to movies for the technical effects. If we want story, we'll read a book.
-- Alastair
Sorry, I don't buy your argument about landlines.
I might buy them as the only place you can enter the matrix, (just as you always 'enter' Adventure at near the wellhouse for a small stream), but not for leaving it. Hell,
it's never adequately explained why they couldn't just say (via cell phone, say) "I want out, unjack me" (or even "beam me up, Scotty"). Don't see how that would be any more mentally traumatic than disappearing into a telphone.
Of course, you lose a lot of dramatic tension if bailing out is that easy. It's just like the transporters always breaking in the original Star Trek -- if they work, it's too easy to just beam out when you're in trouble.
-- Alastair
I think Mr Katz has a little to much time on his hands. The Matrix though a ok movie fell short of a lot of expectations from those that saw it. It may have been a box office hit on it own merits and didn't have the hype of TPM but the only people who will remember it will be the geeks who will compare its special effects to that of the next great "hacker" style movie.
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.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" -- Albert Einstein
You've got a good reason why ... but TPM, no.
Star Wars will be remembered in
popular culture for longer than
the Matrix, yes
TPM seemed to undermine the force
by turning it from eastern mysticism
to western rationality.
It's amusing that you by implication use one award-winning science fiction author (Orson Scott Card) to deprecate another (Neal Stephenson). Also ironic that you complain about people frothing at the mouth about linux in a posting at /. :)
The use of the word geek to describe people who are passionate about programming comes from more than ten years ago: we called ourselves geeks, in a sort of ironic sense. It was something which bonded us together: a rallying cry of technology-oriented people to describe what united us.
The stereotypical geek is, yes, what you describe. But not all, or even most, of them.
Well according to this website, Keanu Reeves has agreed to a $20mil deal to do the sequel for the Matrix.o n/matrix/index.html
http://www2.crosswinds.net/san-francisco/~gryph
I personally loved the Matrix. I just thought that it ended a little bit to soon.
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.
In my opinion, a geek movie would be one that got the tech right. In this sense, Hackers was not a geek movie because while it had some realistic characters (Joey, trying to come up with a psuedo was the most realistic) it bulloxed everything else. Not to say that Hackers or The Matrix were bad movies, they weren't, but that they are generic action flicks with a techno premise.
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.
Okay, I admit my arguments were a bit (very) sloppy In my first post, but the point I was trying to make was NOT that the film was bad (I saw it twice), was NOT that an idea must be original (Else I woulnd't watch movies at all), but that Mr Katz's warm fuzzy soliloquy about the matrix and its influence was overdone and mistargeted. Information presented in new ways is nice, but information presented for the first time will make a bigger impact, and I was arguing that geeks have seen these ideas before (the general ideas, not there antecedants), generaly many times before, where as the hipsters and teenie boppers who went for the visual effects have NOT, and so I expect the Matrix to have a much larger impact on them, because they have never had those thoughts before IN ANY FORM.
"I am the Chosen One, Dude."
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
The Matrix has the _least_ influence on actual card carrying geeks and hackers, because we've read the literature, we've seen the prototypes, The only true GEE-WIZ factor left is that the movie was pretty.
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?
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
I loved the movie. There are no holes anywhere that cannot be easily reasoned away - for instance, there is no violation of the second law. They feed the humans bodies of other humans AS WELL AS leftover hostess snack products mined from old 7-11's, a source of energy obviosuly more vast than our sun and nuclear and geothermal energy combined.
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!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Jon does a good job in describing his perception of the distinctions
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.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
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"?
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
"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."
I think your on to something here Katz.
The AIs represent a stagnant existence. They make no attempt to grow. Take, for instance, the scene where the agent is calling the human race a virus because it expands.
They then impose this stagnation on human beings in the matrix. Humans, whose natural tendency is to improve themselves and grow to new heights, are kept locked down. This can be related to many things in the real world 90s. Katz listed some of them above and there are others as well. I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader.
Along come the heroes, the techno-savy saviors. They have escaped from the matrix and are stronger for it. Noticed that those born in Zion are not able to access the matrix. They have not passed through the trial of fire that gave power to the others. These people are all about breaking down limits. That is what I consider the most important aspect of the movie. A small group striving against a society happy in its delusions to break down the status quo and allow civilization to reach heights that would not be possible under the AI imposed statsis. While there may be no AIs imposing there will on our society, it is certain that the vast majority of people fear change. It is the technophiles who will advance civilization and enlighten those who do not see the advantages of change.
I don't think that anyone in the movie Called Cypher "Louis" at any point, and the Agent called him "Mr Reagan".
As an aside, my sister first saw the Matrix in it's hacked VCD form on my computer. She thought Keanu Reves's characters name was "Neal", not Neo.
"Neal, you are the one!"
---------------
Chad Okere
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
god damnit! SFX are Sound effects stop saying SFX when you mean special effects (how about GFX, graphic effects?)
---------------
Chad Okere
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I think it is important, in your criticism, to distinguish between the mythological references which are central to the article, and philosophical references which you provide. It's not a question of which one is correct. One must appreciate the innate difference between mythology and philosophy. They are not equivalent bodies of work. The Matrix is perhaps also derived from Plato's Cave, perhaps also derived from Descartes' skepticism. That does not preclude the possability that, along with its philosophical argument, it carries a mythological argument (in the same way Star Wars does, or not) with it also.
Either way, if you chose to criticize Mr. Katz on his writing, that's fine (there are enough syntactical errors to merit a little scathing). But don't question his ability to write because he hasn't read the Meditations, or because what he saw underlying the movie was different from what you saw.
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.
He's talking about a flaw in the movie "The Matrix", not about anything related to the real world or creationism. In the movie the sky is all blocked off so there's no solar power and no plants grow. Where does the energy needed by the machines come from? It's generated from human body heat. Where does the humans' food come from? From the bodies of the dead humans...
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...
katz needs all the reinforcement he can get ;)
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Speaking of films involving technology, has anybody here seen the Cronenberg flick "eXistenZ," with Jennifer Jason Leigh as a supposed VR video-game designer?
I haven't been able to talk my usual film review suspects into going w/ me to the indie-film theater, but I've heard it's really really good.
darius
It was a fun movie. I spent money on it twice (admittedly the second time was because I had nothing to do on a Friday evening and a couple of friends wanted to see it). But, the ultimate geek film Katz portrays it as it is not.
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.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Forget about "The Matrix" and "TPM." Granted, both had incredible visuals, but both were pretty short on plot and character development.
I hereby crown "Rushmore" the geek movie of the year. Max Fischer, the film's nerd hero, is the quintessence of geekdom: an eccentric whose ambition and sheer passion for his goals allow him to achieve personal success on his own terms -- irregardless of what anyone else's concept of "normal" is.
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
There are touches any hardcore gamer will love, like characters that loop their dialogue until somebody says the right thing to them.
You can't beat Groundhog Day for taking this to the extreme
garyr-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Matrix was in the ballpark, Dune was in a different part of the ballpark. Star Wars is really myth/fantasy - canonical space opera.
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
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Most of my friends who I have recommended the Matrix to saw it and their first reaction after leaving was "I want to see it again". Not only are the visuals sometimes too much to handle, but the underlying concepts are so much deeper than the vast majority of mass media, the viewing public is not geared to have to _think_ to understand a movie.
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".
+&x
The moment an article becomes though provoking and requires intelligent feedback some slashdotters run and hide.
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).
I generally like Katz's articles, but I have an issue today. This:
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.
-- First post (by a female living in a state that begins with M and does not end in a vowel with a birthday that falls
According to scifi.com, the Wachowski brothers have written a four-part sequel to the Matrix that will be put in comic book form upon their web site. It will be illustrated by Geoff Darrow--an artist whose attention to detail will undoubtedly do the creative vision justice (or more than that).
9 -04/13/16.23.net
h tml
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.
There's a difference between campy or enjoyably bad, and turning a fascinating (for mainstream) film idea into an action flick.
My friends and I will watch mst3k movies--without the mst3k. We even go to the video store LOOKING for trash. That doesn't mean bad always = good.
The first half of the matrix was fantastic, especially the deferral of whether what was going on was fantasy or reality. (Although for a much better job of that, there's a made-for-showtime movie starring Patrick Stewart called Safe House. While not a cinematic masterwork, they keep the suspense high). Then it became a generic action movie. A kickass one, to be sure, and an enjoyable one. But it lost the "edge" it had to begin with.
The notion that we live in a "cave of shadows", seeing imperfect representations of the true "forms" of things was advanced by, IIRC, Plato (not Socrates).
I think Katz is right on. Get off yer high horses. He is not generalizing about geeks. Maybe it's you who thinks your in the box.
You want reality? anecdotes? Here's some.
Me and all my geeky freinds LOVE the Matrix. We think it is one of the most important Sci Fi movies ever made. We've been talking about the movie and its literary allusions for weeks. I've seen it three times.
I haven't seen Phantom yet. We _might_ see it this weekend. Frankly, I am annoyed by the hype. I proudly went to see Midsummer Night's Dream instead of Phantom on opening week. You think that's lame? Get a clue! Midsummer is a great movie and knocks the socks off of Phantom, I'll bet.
The great thing about Matrix and Midsummer is the humanity. They are great stories about people you can relate to. Can you say that about Phantom? Are you obsessed with technology? If you think that you are identified...
Then you Are identified.
Regards,
proclus
Regards,
proclus
I thought that it was disturbing how the climax
of Matrix presaged the Littleton shootings.
Did you notice the black trenchcoats, the guns,
the death and destruction?
Really, I loved the Matrix. I just don't know
what to think about this.
Regards,
proclus
Sorry, I just don't get it. I read those books.
They were great books. What more were you expecting of Matrix?
Regards,
proclus
The Matrix was shot entirely in Sydney, Australia, with bulk of the SFX by a local digital FX company.
Hollywood is just plain too expensive these days.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
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?)
The Homepage that your parents warned you about was a website created over three years ago, to describe a character that I created in a chatroom at the time of the creation of the website.
Carlos, was his name, and he wore a trench coat. A Black one, yes. There was a page devoted to describing the trench coat.
When the Littleton thing hit, (It was a tuesday) that night, the Kansas City Star E-mailed me because thier investigative reporter was searching the net and found my page (listed as number 5 on an Altavista search for "Black Trench Coat Mafia.
It later moved up to number 3. (mind you, the rest of the sites listed were clothing stores.)
Wednesday Afternoon, the McAllen, Texas Monitor E-mailed me as asked me to write a story for them about the issue of young people and "The Trench Coat Mistique".
I do wear a trench coat IRL, and I explained to the news editor that I was in no way attached to these punks in Colorado, or this national organization of underground hoods.
She didn't care, she wanted the story.
So I wrote one, a copy of it appears on the Old Trench Coat Page.
What I say in the article, is that people always have attached an image to the trench coat, be it the mystery, the isolation, the machismo, whatever. But now, because of this incident, everyone is attaching "Death of Innocents" to that list.
I, personally, think that is unfair.
Please don't label the trench coat, label the people who wore them in Colorado.
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
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?"
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
Now that would rule!
I wonder if William Gibson would consider having that made into a movie. I am sure that there must be quite a few people out there who were forever changed by his writings. (as I was)
I was dissappointed to see that the initial responses to Mr. Katz's article were directed solely at his comments on the movies he mentioned, rather than on the larger topics he's asking us to think about. Even if you don't agree that the Matrix is a good "litmus test" for geekness, or that the Matrix and The Phantom Menace are comparable in any context, his thoughts are an extremely well-formed attempt to discover and name some of what defines the "geek" and online culture.
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.
> Sooo ... what's your point, some people can see this, some people are oblivious to it. Thats the way people are, are you trying to educate
> them? Methinks that's pretty arrogant of you if you are.
My point, in case you missed it, is that for any one person to tell another what group they are or are not part of, they must make a statement based only on their own limited perceptions of both that person and that group. Katz has writen this article as if he were the ultimate arbiter of geek-dom. He writes must of his articles that way. If I were to say to you, based on only the email that I have read that you are gay/stupid/straight/brilliant, you'd be pretty offended, right? But he has neatly divided the world into geeks and non-geeks on the basis of how they feel about 2 hours of fiction. Should I be impressed at his omniscience? Or maybe wonder about his conclusions?
To truly understand recursion, you must first truly understand recursion.
Thanks for telling me who I am, Jon, I just love it when you decide to define me... I hate to tell you this, but geeks are no more a homogenous group than any other. Personally, I love the Matrix, but there's plenty of "real geeks" out there who probably don't, whose geek status you have just shot down in flames on the basis of your own definition of geekdom. While I find your essays provoke more discussion than anybody else's on Slashdot, the reason seems to be that you polarize people by making sweeping generalizations that half the people think are totally idiotic and inane, and the other half think are self evident. You might be doing us a service by stirring up the pot, but I'm still trying to decide if you're just doing it for the sake of making people think, or if you really do believe these naive generalizations. I realize that in effect, I have just flamed you, but please don't take it personally. My issues are with your writing style, not you as a human being.
To truly understand recursion, you must first truly understand recursion.
Bullet casings Are gold (At least, every bullet casing i've ever seen has been gold colored). And when you're shooting a multi-barreled, belt-fed weapon, you tend to generate a great deal of casings.
;)
I admit, they did have a hell of a lot of guns.
And as for the un-subtlety of fending off the guy one-handed.. that was the point. He wasnt distracted, he realized that no matter how fast the agents were, he could be faster.. so demonstrated in the way that you know perfectly well you would if you could move that fast.. he kicked his ass
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
Yeah, I have to agree. The Matrix was "okay", but definitely not great (especially the gaping holes in the premise, as you pointed out) and it's hardly a litmus test for geeks. Perhaps its biggest failing point is the *same* failing point that star wars had: glorifying form and special effects over substance.
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.
"humanity (or lack) it behind the masks"? What does that mean? If you want to understand hack-mode, learn the value of syntax. You throw in names of famous authors, but, judging from your disjointed writing, I find it hard to believe that you've read their work.
Don't you edit? Your article rambled, switching from a standard "compare&contrast" to largely unsupported musings about geeks, virtual reality, and "weblogs" -- a name which has already been taken, by the way.
The Truman Show was obviously based upon Plato's Cave. In the same manner, the premise for The Matrix is really a high-tech version of Descartes' dream argument. Read some of Meditations on a First Philosophy by Mr. Descartes and then maybe write an article about how ancient arguments and ideas are being incorporated into the fabric of contemporary technological life.
And remember, Polonius, that brevity is the sole of wit.
Jon
Plot aside, the special effect shots in the Matrix were extremely well done. Using multiple camera's to interpolate a still image which could be traversed in 3-d.
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
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
whatEVER is more like it...
spent a good majority of salaried work time discussing this with other "geeks" - personally, I was insulted. First off, Keanu Reeves (who, it was admitted, "wasn't very bright") as the savior of the world?
Second, the special effects were nice (good job on those special effects, geeks!), and okay, maybe it was kind of neat seeing some interesting ideas watered down, prettied up, and presented to the masses in something they could understand. But geez, any self-respecting geek has already read Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and most things by Philip K. Dick, right? Surely I wasn't the only one expecting something more from this movie - it was a sore disappointment.
I find it amusing how we're fighting so hard against the media stereotyping 'crackers' as 'hackers', and Katz here just goes out and says the characters in the Matrix are hackers. I don't think so. Crackers all the way.
"Please don't sigh like that, maam"
Please remove duplicate. My apologies.
Reality Maintenance Group, Silver City Construction Co., Ltd.
> I personally only find life worth living when I'm coding.
... passed another day. Living for pleasure in coding is no less hedonism than living for you daily dose of soma. You might not have a problem with hedonism; you might have what it takes to live alone, but spiritualism is the response of some of those who think there must be something more to life than solitary pleasure.
[Insert some job here] is not enough for many people -- if it is for you, props to you for it.
> Will anyone remember you or care after you die
> whether or not you played frisbee with your g/f?
Nobody except her, no, but how many better is one than none? Even if -- especially if! -- nobody cares, why bother? What's the point to the daily grind? You sit at home and code all day -- at the end of the day, what have you done? You've
The point is not that you want to be remembered (though I'd personally like to be) -- the point is that people are asking these sort of questions and not getting any answers.
> not everyone likes all that human interest crap
It was an example, not a gospel. I could have just as easily asked "What's the point, if it doesn't get you laid?" and answered in the same way: there are better things to worry about, and better yet not to worry. When you're 75 and beyond Viagra's help, you'll either conclude that life's not worth living or that there's something more to it sex. Most people seem to end up with option two, and a lot earlier than 75.
-_Quinn
Reality Maintenance Group, Silver City Construction Co., Ltd.
Why Matrix over Phantom Menace? Look at the climatic scenes: hacker gets the (goth) girl and then Sees the Code -- Finds the Zone where he can code no wrong. And the Phantom Menace? Annoying child gets lucky; cool Zen master gets butchered by a freak with two speaking lines.
:)
/with/. And you look up at the stars and ask, What I have done today? And the north wind answers: you didn't see the sunrise for the glare it made on your monitor; you didn't watch the sun set or the birds fly or the flowers bloom because you were busy typing; you didn't notice that the man across the street from you celebrated his 80th birthday by gardening, because that's what he likes to do, and damn it, he won the second world war, so it's his by rights. And the east wind says: another couple thousands Kosovans got shoved out of their homes today, looking at the sky and wondering, America, what's the point of planes? People don't live in the sky. And the south wind replies, the point of planes is to /fly/, to live the dream, and what do you do with the dream made real? You sit in the aisle seat for the legroom, so that it looks like just like a train to you -- and you plug your laptop in and continue to write dry sentences about budgets and forecasts, and the future, when you could be dreaming the present. Why? And the west wind says, Why? Because you have no soul, no art, no craft; your job is tell the computers which numbers to crunch; your only product is a viewgraph that's used once to project a poorly-focused picture in a dark and stuffy briefing room, after which it will recycled, because you'd like to think you're doing something for the enviroment. And at the end of the day you're sitting there with the chicken that Purdue roasted for you hanging off the end your fork, realizing: I did nothing today. Nobody will remember; nobody will care. And you /know/ that the old man across the street could have used some help moving the mulch bags around, and you /know/ that you needed the excercise. And even if that were it, his thanks and then taking a nice shower after sweating for an hour, putting on a clean shirt -- it would have made you feel better and happier than anything else you spend time on the whole day. Think about tommorow -- not alot! -- think about driving down with a handful of flowers to your girlfriend's office and spending her lunch hour in the park tossing a frisbee around and then eating a picnic lunch, just to enjoy her company. And whenever she asks why, just smile; because today is a good day to fly.
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
Reality Maintenance Group, Silver City Construction Co., Ltd.
Most of these are published by Vertigo, an imprint of DC. Fantastic graphic art.
But be sure to check out Transmet. Written with exra bitterness by Warren Ellis
The late mythologist Joseph Campbell, who inspired much of the Star Wars mythology . . .
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.
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
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
>A true geek would only be impressed by the film's special effects
Okay, think about this for a second. A true geek? What is that? Must all geeks fit your mold and image?
I loved the film. Thought it was really killer.
One of the things I noticed in "The Matrix" (I liked it btw) was how, conciously or unconciously the references or homage paid to older Sci-Fi and Fantasy classics. Specificly there were parts that reminded me of: 'Blade Runner','StarWars',
'20k Leagues Under the Sea' (Nautilus vs. Nebachaneezer (sp?)), 'Terminator', and 'Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass' (but of course). I found the geek references (the main character being a hack and all) a bit heavy handed, but in general I liked it. In fact I have not seen 'Star Wars I' and do not plan to do so as I am sort of burned our on the series. Maybe I'll catch it on video....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It is very easy to anonymously leave a note that attacks others. Here is a news flash, not everyone agrees with you.
Might I suggest that you do something creative with your angst? Why don't you write an essay about something you care about, and dare I suggest it not be a critique on Katz's work?
Preach on Brutha!
Those are interesting comments that I have not heard before; do you think that you could elaborate on them, or provide some examples?
Thank you,
Lion {:)}=
Lion Kimbro: http://home.sprynet.com/~snowlion/
- 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!)
Lion Kimbro: http://home.sprynet.com/~snowlion/
I think "geek" has more to do with a particular set of trite pop culture interests than anything else: Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, special-effects based movies, comic books, X-Files, The Simpsons / Futurama, a certain group of SF/Fantasy authors (Stephenson, Jordan, Sterling, Pratchett), technology-based toys, and so on.
Most glaring is that a majority of these are the epitome of bad taste. Among award-winning SF authors, there's an intense dislike of corn like Star Trek and Tron (Orson Scott Card's "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy" contains a good example of this opinion). The Matrix is just one bad cliche after another, the sort of thing you'd find on a "please don't submit stories on the following subjects" list from an experienced editor.
Geeks are easy to spot on the web. They froth at the mouth about Linux. They collect MP3s by the gigabyte. They're addicted to technology news sites. They're always nervous about not having the best and latest processor and graphics card. And they don't do a whole lot of much else.
There has to be a better word than "geek" for people who are passionate about programming or other aspects of technology but who aren't just collectors and anti-socials, people who try to be a little more well-rounded in general.
if your computer is on, and you're online and I flick the switch on the powerbar, it is possible to damage your computer right?
Well, if your Brain was plugged into something and i pulled the plug on that, it would probably screw u up pretty good...
okay you've got a point with the phone booth thing, they probably could used someother way of shutting down the connection
Gnothe se Auton
Did you actually watch the movie?
Okay, using the human brain for power is a good idea (if your a semi-psychotic AI..)
Neo was almost totally blind and paralyzed when he first woke up, but his brain "thought" it knew how to walk and see, so its quite plausible that he would recover quickly
As for "Cows" dying, well, remember the line "originally the Matrix was a paradise, but people wouldn't accept a perfect world, and they kept waking up?" if no one died, sooner or later they would catch on...
and yes, all of it made sense, to me (and several hundred thousand other people)
i doubt if you even could understand it...(big words and all.)
Gnothe se Auton
Hey, machines do harvest psychic energy from people...
I just found that i understood the movie, i like it when stuff is explained, even if its not believable, I've played around with Theoretical Quantum Physics at college so stuff that doesn't even exist makes sense...
Gnothe se Auton
"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."
I think you missed the point here. What you interpreted as magic, I saw as conciousness/awareness. I know it sounds cornball, but Neo had the power the whole time. He just didn't have the sentience to use it until that point in time. The fact that he could see the Matrix everywhere was the equivalent of a light bulb coming on.
________________________________________________ devans@netscape.net Silicon Valley, CA _____________________________
The premise of The Matrix is that AIs needs to keep humans around to generate energy for them. Why? Because the mean ol' humans have dropped some nukes and caused a nuclear winter. The AIs need energy from somewhere, so they put humans in vats and use them as powerplants.
But wait. Where do the humans get their energy. While it's true that each of us stores energy (most efficiently extracted by burning our bodies), where do the humans in The Matrix, who were raised in vats on a sun-less (and therefore foodless) planet get their energy? If the AIs have food to feed the humans, why don't they just burn the food for energy? Haven't they heard of the 2nd law of thermodynamics?
The movie makers have created a perpetual motion machine, in which, somehow, humans generate more energy than they consume. Oops!
Why did they do this? Either they're careless, or they got money from Duracell for product placement.
Perhaps you'll say, ok it wasn't good science, but the movie makers needed a reason to put the humans in vats and wire their brains.
How about this: the AIs recognize that human brains are superb computers. They grow humans in vats because it's easier than building their own silicon computers. They run the matrix as a maintainance program, to make sure the captive brains are performing correctly. Then, the movie makers could have done a Norton Utilities product placement!
That would have been great: the matrix is a computer generated world that is run by computer-inhabiting AIs to keep the humans around for CPU cycles. But all these processes are using the same hardware.
Now _that_ would have been a geek movie.
Hadrian
I personally loved the Matrix and so did several of my other friends. The movie was the paramount as far as movie going is concerned as I still can't shake the stupor I felt when I found out what the Matrix really was. I saw the movie twice and it was the first movie in years I thought was worth seeing. That doesn't make me a geek, it makes me free minded enough to envision a world without the conventional maya(the wool pulled over your eyes) that leds many of us to believe that the world is purely what we perceive(read Hyperspace by Michio Kaku it is the perfect demonstration of this fact).
I for one loved the blend of eastern philosophies and virtual technocracy. From Buddhism, to Taoism to virtual AI this movie has everything, I can only hope that Star Wars doesn't put me to sleep before I see Darth Maul kick butt.
"Discordianism is not just a religion; it is a mental illness." -- Lord Omar Ravenhurst
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
Mr. Katz,
Please be aware that many people read your column on slashdot, and I think you owe them the courtesy of having someone proofread your article first. There were just too many typos to be excused.
Sorry,
RH
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Actually it didn't come from nowhere, it was filmed in Sydney, at the new Fox Studios...
Zilch.