The difference is, whereas Moore ambushes people (like Charlton Heston, head of the NRA, where he claimed falsely that he was a member in order to get closer to him) and only writes short jokes, Swift was a brilliant politician as well as writer. He was invited several times to speak to Parliament, and was respected for his political insight. Moreover, his writing was metaphorical fiction, which is intrinsically more difficult to write than simply stating the problems you perceive [as Moore does].
I'm not saying Moore is a terrible writer, or an idiot, or any other flamebait like that. Granted, I do think he's an asshole for the stunt he pulled at the Oscars, but that's neither here nor there.
My simple point is this: Moore barely makes his point well by stating it directly, whereas Swift is still easily understandable as a thought-out critique of many aspects of his contemporary society, even today centuries later.
Moreover, people often use "Swiftian" as an adjective now (referring to his then-unique style of slowly transitioning the reasonable into the ludicrous so as to demonstrate the absurdities of reality; check out his "A Moderate Proposal"), and I have a real doubt they'll similarly use "Mooreian" or any such term at any point in the future.
This is unfortunately a flaw of this type of scientific experiment. While it seems to fit the formula for a proper experiment at first (make a prediction, test it with an experimental group while not testing it on a control group, compare results with your prediction, analyze), its flawed in that it doesn't make it clear whether its a causal connection or merely coincidence (i.e. the two traits - game playing and better visual acuity - may be connected not because they affect each other, but because of some third locus), and moreover if its causal it doesn't determine which causes which.
The way to test this, of course, is to test the groups' visual abilities first at the onset of the experiment, then have them play the games extensively for a lengthy period of time (several weeks, months, or years depending on how long such neurological structures take to emerge), then test those abilities again.
"And, instead of being a tool for social mobility, higher education will become (for my children's generation) a barrier to social mobility."
Higher education was not, originally a tool for social mobility. Until the mid-1900s, it was only for the wealthy. It served as a forum for maintaining the social class system, throughout the western world. With the economic booms following both wars, people in the middle classes of the West found themselves able to afford higher education for their children, which they thought would enable social mobility. Statistically, this was false, since most couldn't afford a school with enough quality to make significant economic gains, at first. With the increased booms through the 60s and 70s (until the mid-80s, really) it finally did permit mobility. What I'm saying here is that its not a valid critique of education to complain that its not a tool for social mobility. Education is for intellectual advancement, which only may or may not include material gains.
"Hopefully this will mean less worthless degrees, such as, English and History"
You, sir, are an arse. To claim that education in english and history is worthless is to be ignorant of the value of both art and collective memory to society. Without historians, we would forget our past and [as is oft quoated glibly] be doomed to repeat it. As for english, the critical study of art [in all forms] is vital to the understanding of human society, with extensions througout the social sciences from anthropology, psychology and more. As for your wife teaching, anyone who thought ahead would have discovered [long before graduation] that teaching typically requires a graduate degree. However, you're incorrect in assuming that all art/english majors are unqualified for professional jobs. Among others, I have over a dozen people I could list off the top of my head amongst my friends and my sister's friends who had degrees in art, history or english who went straight from college into jobs in major commercial companies (ranging from a top magazine, an ad company, and the PR department of NY City and more) without different degrees. Maybe the reason your wife wasn't "qualified" had more to do with her and her personal education, than with the general education entailed by art/english/history degrees.
"More students should consider attending a State or Community college for the first 2 years of under-grad. It is cheaper and, for the first 2 years, the worthless subjects taught are about the same.
At my undergrad, there are no worthless subjects taught. Georgetown has a core set of requirements involving classes in several departments (including philosophy, theology, english, history, math/science, language) which can be fulfilled by taking low or high level classes. I never took a course labelled below 100 level, and couldn't have gotten anything on the level of the classes I took at a state school (my several friends at U.Florida confirm this every time we talk about school). You get what you pay for.
I think the idea of a free-trial for things like the Apple Music Store are simply unneccessary, for the simple reason that everyone who would use such a thing already likes music and likely already has an mp3 collection of some sort.
These people are smart enough to understand the store concept, and know already whether or not they'd pay a dollar per song. Being able to get 30 or whatever for free wouldn't sway you either way; it would just give you 30 songs.
Free trials are useful for swaying customers only if those potential customers aren't sure that they'd enjoy the functionality or format of the service. With something as elegantly simple as The Music Store, this simply isn't necessary.
A Five Day Free trial? I dont know about you, but I could download a couple hundred songs easily on a school network over a five-day period. Lets assume 3 minutes per song, so thats 20 per hour, then 6 hours at the computer (i.e. nighttime usage, since its orientation week) so 120 per day, 600 songs total at the end. I know people whose whole collections are smaller than 600 (though mine is several thousand).
Um, that only applies to public universities. Private universities (which account for the majority of upper-echelon schools, i.e. the top 50+) are fully funded by a combination of tuition and grants/donations. While some schools (such as Harvard) are so well endowed that they barely need to charge tuition (though they dont typically reduce that tuition, heh), others such as Georgetown lack significant endowment and need to charge slightly higher tuitions.
I believe you're mistaken. First, the term "zealot" doesn't refer to a particular sect of Jews in the Roman era, but instead a class of them, i.e. those who were most eager for a military leader. However, the prophecies were very specific. In fact, the word "messiah" is derived from a hebrew word which roughly aliterates as "meshinah", which specifically means "military savior".
There were not, though, multiple sects of Judaism during the Roman period, until the arrival of Jesus the Nazarene. When he came at age 30 and started a new cult of Jews, that was the first primary split. This cult of "jews for jesus" as it were believed that Jesus would return shortly (within a few days or years, apparently) and lead them to the new Kingdom. This is of course why the scriptures weren't written for decades after Jesus' death: the apostles thought he was returning in their lifetime, why would you need a written text then?
First, I'm not a professor yet. I'm working on my PhD.
Second, since you're claiming to be a philosophy BA (based on your email), its odd that you completely misread the statement. I was suggesting that philosophy serves to encourage enlightenment. That I expanded that, permitting it to include not only purely intellectual enlightenment but also the metaphysical enlightenment that philosophers who are also religious (such as buddhist monks or jewish Kabalists) often reach.
Frankly, I'd have to respond to you with a "bzzt" of your own, saying that you are either a troll or lousy phil prof. You couldn't even parse a simple statement, and your assumptions excluded any philosophers who beleive there's a spiritual side to enlightenment.
I have to wonder, who thought this was a troll? Which part of it was troll like? This is why I continue to believe we should have all our moderations be publically visible. Why is it that this very open-source-friendly collection of individuals here at Slashdot is so afraid of being held responsible for their [irresponsible] moderations?
You're quite correct in that there are some Christian tennants, but the majority are buddhist. Moreover, what is mildly Christian is far more Jewish:
The messiah to the Jews was a military leader who was prophesized to return and restore the military Kingom of Israel. They were pretty sure, in the time of Jesus, that this would be someone from the line of David (hence the use of Joseph to attribute this to Jesus). One of the primary reasons most Jews at the time denied that Jesus was the messiah was because he was far from a military leader: he advocated peace and acceptance, which was quite contrary to the Jewish model of a messiah.
The One seems more to be a Boddhisatva. In The Buddhism of the Great Vehicle, there is the belief that some people realize that they're about to achieve Enlightenment, but instead of fully crossing over themself, they remain here in The Great Illusion so as to facilitate the Enlightment of others. These are Boddhisatvas, basically "helping buddhas".
The patronizing attitude you have towards myself and my contemporaries (i.e. academic philosophers) shows just how much you should have taken a few of the classes when you were in college.
If you're not old enough to have taken college classes, then frankly you shouldn't talk about things beyond your kin.
Philosophy serves to do a few things, at the bare minimum: 1, encourage people to critically analyze everything in their life, in the pursuit of enlightenment (be it purely intellectual or possibly mystical), 2, enable people to better apply critical reasoning to every-day problems including everything from law to science to programming.
To overly simplify philosophy as the glib "people who get paid to think of what life might mean" grossly fails to appreciate the depth of the field. The majority of philosophy today deals with epistemology (the study of knowledge, both in terms of its form and its function), ethics (the study of moral systems) and meta-ethics (the study of the origins and basis of moral systems).
Thats funny since the Bible was never enscribed in stone, at least typically (i.e. it was never the standard form of enscription). Neither was the Torah/Old Testament. Both were originally scribed on fabrics/papers.
Since you mention centuries, you obviously missed Gibson's reference to the fact that "books" have only existed as they do today since the Printing Press was invented by Guttenberg. This of course occured in 1436. Prior to that, books were hand-duplicated by religious scribes, and so their content was almost entirely unrelated to modern books due to their intense cost and limited audience. The post-moving-type book is dramatically different: the ability of the hoi-paloi to both read and write but also to own their own copies of text meant massive changes in content and style.
Wrong. One of my best friends was signed by Atlantic recently, and the tour they have set up for them for the summer/early fall is slated to provide a minimum (before merchandise sales) of $6-8 each (for a 9 person band). This is after their living/travel expenses are paid. Thats covering a 3-7 month period at most, and represents profit. Moreover, they are quite likely to sell at least a moderate amount of merchandise/cd's, which will puff that money up.
The only other alternatives I can think of at the moment are:
1: Neo's power, unbeknownst to him, actually extends to distorting the real world, not just the matrix. This seems implausible and undesireably theological.
2: Neo's power extends to controlling the machines somehow in or outside of the matrix. This could be a result of the machines' conception of Neo always including his matrix-bending powers. In other words, this would be a programming flaw in the machines. This seems a little lame.
3: The ENTIRE "real world", including Zion, is inside the matrix. Just as the oracle seems to be part of a control scheme, so is the supposed ability to leave the matrix. I like this explanation, although its a bit dark for most people: it would be a serious philosophical blow to Morpheus, of course.
I believe that when Neo thought he was leaving the Architect's room, he didn't. He entered a sub-simulation, created by the Architect, that included imitations of Trinity et al. This included even the imitation of "leaving" the matrix.
In other words, I think the third movie will open with Neo back in the Architect's room.
According to the Architect, it was to counter-balance the need for humans to have a sense of choice.
In the Utopic matrix, people had no choice about their existence, if they were born in: they could only live in paradise. This caused several crops to be lost, according to Smith. Then, a program originally designed to understand human psychology (described as an "intuitive program" by the Architect) realized that this stemmed from the human need, psychologically, for choice. This was the Oracle.
So, they created an imperfect matrix, one with suffering. This was to create the impetus for the choice to be made, albeit on a subconscious level. However, without a viable option opposed to the matrix, the choice would be meaningless. Thus, they encouraged the existence of the system anomoly - The One - who then helped them build the first Zion as the opposing option to the matrix.
Its all to create a choice, albeit one that in the end is also illusory.
Here's the thing: while the people inside the matrix would be experiencing the Renaissance, the world outside the matrix would still be a 22nd or 23rd century one, including all the tech running the matrix itself.
Now remember, after the Utopia, the Oracle and Architect knew there'd be a One (they planned on it, as a solution to the systemic anomoly). So when The One appears, its intuitive - i.e. he has no one guiding him to understand the world. More likely than not, he was a monk or priest or some other type of meditative ascetic. When he came to realize the truth, the machines probably were quite honest with him, explaining the situation. Since The One wasn't receiving contrary claims (i.e. by Zionists), he might not think this was a bad thing. Then, the machines use the first One to build Zion.
Granted, if you were a 15th century intellectual who suddenly found out the world was FAR more technologically advanced than you realized before, it might be harded to understand than for a 20th century intellectual, but its still feasable. Once they had that realization, and were detached from the Matrix, they'd have the technology required from the previous Zionists. Of course, this technology would originally come from the machines, who gave it to the One, to build the first Zion. After all, thats what hte Architect was asking of Neo: to rebuild the next Zion fresh, with 23 individuals from the current Matrix (notice, not from the current Zion).
So, you saw an Article talking about a scene in the Matrix Reloaded, then complain when posts inside that article discuss the content of Reloaded? Fuck off. The very article posting contained spoilers.
The date in the real world, actually, is not 2199. Its closer to 2499. Morpheus mistakenly believed it to be closer to 2199 because he thought it was a century since the first One released people and started Zion. The Architect, however, has revealed that this is actually the 5th or 6th Zion.
Thats the point: the world has progressed most likely. The matrix has apparently been running between 500 and 600 years (since The One is a systemic anomoly, and Morpheus makes repeated note that this current Zion has been around for 100 years, its likely that each One takes 100 years). Most likely, after the first [Utopic] Matrix failed, they did one of the following:
1: To periodically reset the time in the matrix, by permitting all the adults to die while not maintaining crops of infants in suspended animation. Once the adults died, they would then revive the children, and have software "parents" raise them. I dont really like this option, it seems pretty unlikely.
2: The first matrix after the Utopic failure was set in the 14th century, i.e. the beginnings of the Renaissance. This would fit with Smith's description of "the peak of your civilization", depending on your perspective, since this was the period of scientific enlightment. This also sits well with the Oracle's statement that the myths of supernatural creatures all derive from bugs/rogue programs in the Matrix. This also sits well with the idea of the first One appearing, since this was a period wherein people were dramatically reforming their conception of the universe.
There are probably other solutions, but these are two I've thought of.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference is, whereas Moore ambushes people (like Charlton Heston, head of the NRA, where he claimed falsely that he was a member in order to get closer to him) and only writes short jokes, Swift was a brilliant politician as well as writer. He was invited several times to speak to Parliament, and was respected for his political insight. Moreover, his writing was metaphorical fiction, which is intrinsically more difficult to write than simply stating the problems you perceive [as Moore does].
I'm not saying Moore is a terrible writer, or an idiot, or any other flamebait like that. Granted, I do think he's an asshole for the stunt he pulled at the Oscars, but that's neither here nor there.
My simple point is this: Moore barely makes his point well by stating it directly, whereas Swift is still easily understandable as a thought-out critique of many aspects of his contemporary society, even today centuries later.
Moreover, people often use "Swiftian" as an adjective now (referring to his then-unique style of slowly transitioning the reasonable into the ludicrous so as to demonstrate the absurdities of reality; check out his "A Moderate Proposal"), and I have a real doubt they'll similarly use "Mooreian" or any such term at any point in the future.
This is unfortunately a flaw of this type of scientific experiment. While it seems to fit the formula for a proper experiment at first (make a prediction, test it with an experimental group while not testing it on a control group, compare results with your prediction, analyze), its flawed in that it doesn't make it clear whether its a causal connection or merely coincidence (i.e. the two traits - game playing and better visual acuity - may be connected not because they affect each other, but because of some third locus), and moreover if its causal it doesn't determine which causes which.
The way to test this, of course, is to test the groups' visual abilities first at the onset of the experiment, then have them play the games extensively for a lengthy period of time (several weeks, months, or years depending on how long such neurological structures take to emerge), then test those abilities again.
Wow, so many things to commment on.
"And, instead of being a tool for social mobility, higher education will become (for my children's generation) a barrier to social mobility."
Higher education was not, originally a tool for social mobility. Until the mid-1900s, it was only for the wealthy. It served as a forum for maintaining the social class system, throughout the western world. With the economic booms following both wars, people in the middle classes of the West found themselves able to afford higher education for their children, which they thought would enable social mobility. Statistically, this was false, since most couldn't afford a school with enough quality to make significant economic gains, at first. With the increased booms through the 60s and 70s (until the mid-80s, really) it finally did permit mobility. What I'm saying here is that its not a valid critique of education to complain that its not a tool for social mobility. Education is for intellectual advancement, which only may or may not include material gains.
"Hopefully this will mean less worthless degrees, such as, English and History"
You, sir, are an arse. To claim that education in english and history is worthless is to be ignorant of the value of both art and collective memory to society. Without historians, we would forget our past and [as is oft quoated glibly] be doomed to repeat it. As for english, the critical study of art [in all forms] is vital to the understanding of human society, with extensions througout the social sciences from anthropology, psychology and more. As for your wife teaching, anyone who thought ahead would have discovered [long before graduation] that teaching typically requires a graduate degree. However, you're incorrect in assuming that all art/english majors are unqualified for professional jobs. Among others, I have over a dozen people I could list off the top of my head amongst my friends and my sister's friends who had degrees in art, history or english who went straight from college into jobs in major commercial companies (ranging from a top magazine, an ad company, and the PR department of NY City and more) without different degrees. Maybe the reason your wife wasn't "qualified" had more to do with her and her personal education, than with the general education entailed by art/english/history degrees.
"More students should consider attending a State or Community college for the first 2 years of under-grad. It is cheaper and, for the first 2 years, the worthless subjects taught are about the same.
At my undergrad, there are no worthless subjects taught. Georgetown has a core set of requirements involving classes in several departments (including philosophy, theology, english, history, math/science, language) which can be fulfilled by taking low or high level classes. I never took a course labelled below 100 level, and couldn't have gotten anything on the level of the classes I took at a state school (my several friends at U.Florida confirm this every time we talk about school). You get what you pay for.
I think the idea of a free-trial for things like the Apple Music Store are simply unneccessary, for the simple reason that everyone who would use such a thing already likes music and likely already has an mp3 collection of some sort.
These people are smart enough to understand the store concept, and know already whether or not they'd pay a dollar per song. Being able to get 30 or whatever for free wouldn't sway you either way; it would just give you 30 songs.
Free trials are useful for swaying customers only if those potential customers aren't sure that they'd enjoy the functionality or format of the service. With something as elegantly simple as The Music Store, this simply isn't necessary.
A Five Day Free trial? I dont know about you, but I could download a couple hundred songs easily on a school network over a five-day period. Lets assume 3 minutes per song, so thats 20 per hour, then 6 hours at the computer (i.e. nighttime usage, since its orientation week) so 120 per day, 600 songs total at the end. I know people whose whole collections are smaller than 600 (though mine is several thousand).
Um, that only applies to public universities. Private universities (which account for the majority of upper-echelon schools, i.e. the top 50+) are fully funded by a combination of tuition and grants/donations. While some schools (such as Harvard) are so well endowed that they barely need to charge tuition (though they dont typically reduce that tuition, heh), others such as Georgetown lack significant endowment and need to charge slightly higher tuitions.
I believe you're mistaken. First, the term "zealot" doesn't refer to a particular sect of Jews in the Roman era, but instead a class of them, i.e. those who were most eager for a military leader. However, the prophecies were very specific. In fact, the word "messiah" is derived from a hebrew word which roughly aliterates as "meshinah", which specifically means "military savior".
There were not, though, multiple sects of Judaism during the Roman period, until the arrival of Jesus the Nazarene. When he came at age 30 and started a new cult of Jews, that was the first primary split. This cult of "jews for jesus" as it were believed that Jesus would return shortly (within a few days or years, apparently) and lead them to the new Kingdom. This is of course why the scriptures weren't written for decades after Jesus' death: the apostles thought he was returning in their lifetime, why would you need a written text then?
First, I'm not a professor yet. I'm working on my PhD.
Second, since you're claiming to be a philosophy BA (based on your email), its odd that you completely misread the statement. I was suggesting that philosophy serves to encourage enlightenment. That I expanded that, permitting it to include not only purely intellectual enlightenment but also the metaphysical enlightenment that philosophers who are also religious (such as buddhist monks or jewish Kabalists) often reach.
Frankly, I'd have to respond to you with a "bzzt" of your own, saying that you are either a troll or lousy phil prof. You couldn't even parse a simple statement, and your assumptions excluded any philosophers who beleive there's a spiritual side to enlightenment.
I have to wonder, who thought this was a troll? Which part of it was troll like? This is why I continue to believe we should have all our moderations be publically visible. Why is it that this very open-source-friendly collection of individuals here at Slashdot is so afraid of being held responsible for their [irresponsible] moderations?
You're quite correct in that there are some Christian tennants, but the majority are buddhist. Moreover, what is mildly Christian is far more Jewish:
The messiah to the Jews was a military leader who was prophesized to return and restore the military Kingom of Israel. They were pretty sure, in the time of Jesus, that this would be someone from the line of David (hence the use of Joseph to attribute this to Jesus). One of the primary reasons most Jews at the time denied that Jesus was the messiah was because he was far from a military leader: he advocated peace and acceptance, which was quite contrary to the Jewish model of a messiah.
The One seems more to be a Boddhisatva. In The Buddhism of the Great Vehicle, there is the belief that some people realize that they're about to achieve Enlightenment, but instead of fully crossing over themself, they remain here in The Great Illusion so as to facilitate the Enlightment of others. These are Boddhisatvas, basically "helping buddhas".
The patronizing attitude you have towards myself and my contemporaries (i.e. academic philosophers) shows just how much you should have taken a few of the classes when you were in college.
If you're not old enough to have taken college classes, then frankly you shouldn't talk about things beyond your kin.
Philosophy serves to do a few things, at the bare minimum: 1, encourage people to critically analyze everything in their life, in the pursuit of enlightenment (be it purely intellectual or possibly mystical), 2, enable people to better apply critical reasoning to every-day problems including everything from law to science to programming.
To overly simplify philosophy as the glib "people who get paid to think of what life might mean" grossly fails to appreciate the depth of the field. The majority of philosophy today deals with epistemology (the study of knowledge, both in terms of its form and its function), ethics (the study of moral systems) and meta-ethics (the study of the origins and basis of moral systems).
Thats funny, I DID refer to moving type as the key, in the phrase "post-moving-type". Next time read what you're replying to.
Whoops. Ah well, spelling mistakes will always creep in.
Thats funny since the Bible was never enscribed in stone, at least typically (i.e. it was never the standard form of enscription). Neither was the Torah/Old Testament. Both were originally scribed on fabrics/papers.
Since you mention centuries, you obviously missed Gibson's reference to the fact that "books" have only existed as they do today since the Printing Press was invented by Guttenberg. This of course occured in 1436. Prior to that, books were hand-duplicated by religious scribes, and so their content was almost entirely unrelated to modern books due to their intense cost and limited audience. The post-moving-type book is dramatically different: the ability of the hoi-paloi to both read and write but also to own their own copies of text meant massive changes in content and style.
THAT, is the "centuries" Gibson is talking about.
Okay, funny typo: that should have read "$6-8 thousand each"
Wrong. One of my best friends was signed by Atlantic recently, and the tour they have set up for them for the summer/early fall is slated to provide a minimum (before merchandise sales) of $6-8 each (for a 9 person band). This is after their living/travel expenses are paid. Thats covering a 3-7 month period at most, and represents profit. Moreover, they are quite likely to sell at least a moderate amount of merchandise/cd's, which will puff that money up.
Exactly.
The only other alternatives I can think of at the moment are:
1: Neo's power, unbeknownst to him, actually extends to distorting the real world, not just the matrix. This seems implausible and undesireably theological.
2: Neo's power extends to controlling the machines somehow in or outside of the matrix. This could be a result of the machines' conception of Neo always including his matrix-bending powers. In other words, this would be a programming flaw in the machines. This seems a little lame.
3: The ENTIRE "real world", including Zion, is inside the matrix. Just as the oracle seems to be part of a control scheme, so is the supposed ability to leave the matrix. I like this explanation, although its a bit dark for most people: it would be a serious philosophical blow to Morpheus, of course.
No, I disagree.
I believe that when Neo thought he was leaving the Architect's room, he didn't. He entered a sub-simulation, created by the Architect, that included imitations of Trinity et al. This included even the imitation of "leaving" the matrix.
In other words, I think the third movie will open with Neo back in the Architect's room.
According to the Architect, it was to counter-balance the need for humans to have a sense of choice.
In the Utopic matrix, people had no choice about their existence, if they were born in: they could only live in paradise. This caused several crops to be lost, according to Smith. Then, a program originally designed to understand human psychology (described as an "intuitive program" by the Architect) realized that this stemmed from the human need, psychologically, for choice. This was the Oracle.
So, they created an imperfect matrix, one with suffering. This was to create the impetus for the choice to be made, albeit on a subconscious level. However, without a viable option opposed to the matrix, the choice would be meaningless. Thus, they encouraged the existence of the system anomoly - The One - who then helped them build the first Zion as the opposing option to the matrix.
Its all to create a choice, albeit one that in the end is also illusory.
We can probably assume that the Matrix was, in fact, built around 2099. We can gather this because of the following info:
1: Morpheus believed Zion had existed for 100 years.
2: Morpheus believed Zion was founded by the original One.
Therefor, it seems logical that the original matrix was conceived of around 2099, and they've just been repeating that date as the starting point.
Here's the thing: while the people inside the matrix would be experiencing the Renaissance, the world outside the matrix would still be a 22nd or 23rd century one, including all the tech running the matrix itself.
Now remember, after the Utopia, the Oracle and Architect knew there'd be a One (they planned on it, as a solution to the systemic anomoly). So when The One appears, its intuitive - i.e. he has no one guiding him to understand the world. More likely than not, he was a monk or priest or some other type of meditative ascetic. When he came to realize the truth, the machines probably were quite honest with him, explaining the situation. Since The One wasn't receiving contrary claims (i.e. by Zionists), he might not think this was a bad thing. Then, the machines use the first One to build Zion.
Granted, if you were a 15th century intellectual who suddenly found out the world was FAR more technologically advanced than you realized before, it might be harded to understand than for a 20th century intellectual, but its still feasable. Once they had that realization, and were detached from the Matrix, they'd have the technology required from the previous Zionists. Of course, this technology would originally come from the machines, who gave it to the One, to build the first Zion. After all, thats what hte Architect was asking of Neo: to rebuild the next Zion fresh, with 23 individuals from the current Matrix (notice, not from the current Zion).
So, you saw an Article talking about a scene in the Matrix Reloaded, then complain when posts inside that article discuss the content of Reloaded? Fuck off. The very article posting contained spoilers.
The date in the real world, actually, is not 2199. Its closer to 2499. Morpheus mistakenly believed it to be closer to 2199 because he thought it was a century since the first One released people and started Zion. The Architect, however, has revealed that this is actually the 5th or 6th Zion.
Thats the point: the world has progressed most likely. The matrix has apparently been running between 500 and 600 years (since The One is a systemic anomoly, and Morpheus makes repeated note that this current Zion has been around for 100 years, its likely that each One takes 100 years). Most likely, after the first [Utopic] Matrix failed, they did one of the following:
1: To periodically reset the time in the matrix, by permitting all the adults to die while not maintaining crops of infants in suspended animation. Once the adults died, they would then revive the children, and have software "parents" raise them. I dont really like this option, it seems pretty unlikely.
2: The first matrix after the Utopic failure was set in the 14th century, i.e. the beginnings of the Renaissance. This would fit with Smith's description of "the peak of your civilization", depending on your perspective, since this was the period of scientific enlightment. This also sits well with the Oracle's statement that the myths of supernatural creatures all derive from bugs/rogue programs in the Matrix. This also sits well with the idea of the first One appearing, since this was a period wherein people were dramatically reforming their conception of the universe.
There are probably other solutions, but these are two I've thought of.
RTFA. They explicitly state the recyclability. Moreover, there's a discussion of this right above your post.
I have no idea why you'd post this, since you clearly didn't read either the posts above you or the article itself.