The Matrix (1999) presents to viewers a computer hacker known as Neo. By day, Neo (his alter-ego is Mr. Anderson) is a computer programmer, and at night he sells hacked software. Morpheus, a character who attempts to awaken humans from a dreamlike trance known as the Matrix, solicits the assistance of Neo.
Morpheus offers Neo the chance to see the truth about the world in which he lives. Neo, and other humans as well, are housed as biochemical food for the artificial intelligence that controls the planet. Neo wages a war in a secret underground, where he fights with Morpheus against the agents who protect the parasitic machines who live off the heat and electrochemical energy humans produce with their bodies.
Neo discovers that the machines
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According to the movie plot, humans long ago gave up their hold on knowledge when artificial intelligence becomes too powerful to contain.
The concept that knowledge is power takes on intriguing implications when juxtaposed against another of Plato’s teachings. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato taught that prisoners who been chained to a stone wall for their entire lives knew the only reality they had experienced. A puppet master could flash shadows on the wall, and if the prisoners could never turn their heads, their reality would consist of two-dimensional shadows because that is all they have ever known. Their knowledge and experience goes no further than the stone wall in front of them.
Neo’s first reality was a shadow world. His body lived inside a box, and like millions of other humans, and he lived in a world of shadows cast on the wall by puppeteers. In essence, the humans in the Matrix are prisoners chained to a wall. A former prisoner himself, Neo has been released from his bonds and allowed to step beyond the stone wall and the fire of Plato’s allegorical cave, where he could see true reality. He becomes empowered by his own knowledge about the thought experiment he had been subjected
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While it is unlikely that humans will allow artificial intelligence to develop a parasitic relationship with them, The Matrix gives the viewer pause to wonder what else in the world may not be real as perceived. Everything we perceive has the potential to be an illusion. It is only knowledge that will give us the power to be free.
Likewise, people who eschew experience and education are no better off than the prisoners chained to the stone. The uneducated have limited knowledge and less power. It is not until, like Neo, they break the chains confining them and are willing to explore new worlds, that they may understand reality.
From The Matrix we learn that it is realistic to be skeptical of the world; government is deceitful. Elected officials use their knowledge to make decisions on behalf of ignorant people. Leaders find it incumbent on themselves to make all decisions related to the health, safety and well-being of people whom they rule. Elected officials in contemporary politics view this decision-making as a necessity, thinking that because they are in control and have power, they are the ones who know more than the common
As the plot of The Matrix advances, this “reality” is explained. Neo eventually wakes up, and witnesses the truth – a world controlled, by machines. As he awakens to a dark desolate world, towers taller than sky scrapers surround him, loaded with humans – in a cocooned state. Machines monitor these sleeping humans - who are unaware of the truth. One of these machines quickly scans Neo, and realizes things aren’t quite right with him, and so he is released down a tube leading to a body disposal, and his possible demise. They (the machines) obviously don’t want him
Having read the synopsis from The Matrix, the excerpt from Plato, The Republic, Book VII, 514A1-518D8 “The Allegory Of The Cave”, and the excerpt from Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641 “Meditation I Of The Things Of Which We May Doubt”, I am able to conclude that there are similarities as well as differences among these readings. Each question the state of reality in which we live. Is our reality a true state of reality or is it a state of mind we have allowed ourselves to exist in?
In the beginning there were two worlds. The lower world, and the upper world. Everything existed in total darkness. The upper world was to hold mankind, and the lower world was where all of the monsters lived. A woman gave birth too twins. One twin was the good mind and the other was the evil mind. The good mind
Deception is the foundational issue prevalent in The Matrix, Plato’s allegory of the cave, and Rene Descartes meditations. In each of these excerpts the goal of answering the question of what is real and how to uncover the truth is essential. Another question that arises throughout all three excerpts is whether or not the individuals will be able to handle the truth when it is finally learnt. In The Matrix Morpheus reveals to Neo that the life he had previously accepted as an absolute reality is really a virtual reality that is manipulated by a computer which is essentially controlling the mind of every individual as they lie unconscious connected to this
The Republic is considered to be one of Plato’s most storied legacies. Plato recorded many different philosophical ideals in his writings. Addressing a wide variety of topics from justice in book one, to knowledge, enlightenment, and the senses as he does in book seven. In his seventh book, when discussing the concept of knowledge, he is virtually addressing the cliché “seeing is believing”, while attempting to validate the roots of our knowledge. By his use of philosophical themes, Plato is able to further his points on enlightenment, knowledge, and education. In this allegory, the depictions of humans as they are chained, their only knowledge of the world is what is seen inside the cave. Plato considers what would happen to people
The Matrix is a sci-fi heavily reliant on the theme of cyber culture and cyber punk. Like Case, Neo too is a computer hacker, but the similarity ends there. While Case is clearly an anti-hero, Neo flies pretty close to being an ideal hero. “Neo” which is also an anagram of “One” is the one prophesied by the Oracle to bring in the destruction of the matrix and usher in the freedom of mankind. While
For the creation of Artificial Intelligence could easily open a Pandora's box of monstrosities that could very well haunt and control us, just as Victor did when he gave life to his monster.
After the early 21st century, humans built these machines, which are now held in a nuclear-winter-like setting. Being deprived of sunlight as an energy source, they have enslaved the human race and are farming people as a source of bioelectrical energy. The humans are kept in an unconscious state in podlike containers in a vast holding field, plugged in to a central computer. In the scenario of The Matrix, everything in the world; cars, buildings, cities, and countries are part of a complex computer-generated virtual reality, which within the humans interact. Everything they see, smell and hear is part of this virtual construct and does not really exist. A computer merely stimulates their brains and deceives them into believing that they are all living normal 20th-century lives, eating sleeping, working and interacting together. They are all blinded to the truth about how and why they exist. After a handful of people have escaped from the nightmarish world of the Matrix, they find out the truth and reach out to those still consumed with the falsities of this world. One of these, a man named Morpheus, hacks into the Matrix and contacts Neo, telling him,
This first paragraph that begins the story is perfect in showing The Matrix ideas. Humans live in pods in large fields were they are grown. So like in the story they are prisoners even as children and they are plugged into the matrix or "chained so they cannot move." The fire behind the prisoners is like the matrix program it self, it's there to make illusions and make the prisoners think what they see is "real." Lastly there are the puppeteers who make shadows using the fire and create illusions. The puppeteers can easily be linked to the machines that hold the humans as prisoners and make what happens in the matrix happen. Such as the puppeteers make shadows in the fire to trick the humans, the machines do the same thing in The Matrix, it's just in a more advanced and complicated way. The machines create
The cave dweller and Neo both live a life of ignorance by thinking that their world is real, when in reality their world is keeping them from seeing the truth. Both Neo and the
Being a human is a digital reality in the Matrix; in the real world, everyone is just a power/heat source for the artificial intelligent machines that
In “The Matrix” everyone is born into a false sense of education and knowledge. People of the Matrix represent the prisoners in Plato’s allegory of the cave in the sense that “the prisoners do not realize they are prisoners; to the contrary, they deem themselves free...they are ignorant of their ignorance,” (Griswold 128). Everyone is a part of a sophisticated program where everything is merely code. This means that anything learned through education in the Matrix is not true education as Plato would see it because it is being downloaded, “The Matrix is everywhere...It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth...you are a slave Neo...born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind,” (Griswold 128). Although the Matrix may seem desirable compared to the reality of the world outside of the Matrix, people are not experiencing true education or freedom because the reality they live in is fake.
We do not learn till later that the movie is simply a computer data that creates a dream world for its prisoners. We can honestly say that nothing in the scientific world of the movie was real. The Matrix was created by fake machines. Morpheus in the movie explains to Neo after he is reborn into reality. The term Morpheus comes Greek mythology, his name refers to the ability to change. The term fits well with it because, Morpheus has control over the dream world
In the future, we may be able to build a computer that is comparable to the human brain, but not until we truly understand one thing. Lewis Thomas talks about this in his essay, "Computers." He says, "It is in our collective behavior that we are most mysterious. We won't be able to construct machines like ourselves until we've understood this, and we're not even close" (Thomas 473). Thomas wrote this essay in 1974, and although we have made many technological advances
Artificial Intelligence is a topic within the public media that has existed for decades, but is now a concern due to the reality of human advancement and innovation in the field of science and technology. Many people believe that computers will become self-aware or sentient and view humanity as a disposable resource and gain supremacy. Reasoning that research on the technology should halt and not become more advance. Whereas others believe they will help catapult research and the economy forward, supporting the operations and innovations the technology offers. The complicated and divided solutions to the debate aren’t obvious, but there are more benefits to improving artificial intelligence than there is stopping it. Therefore, the negative effects people believe will occur can be resolved.