The virtualisation of everyday life
The first idea that I want to focus on is that of the whole of everyday life being lived out in an illusory environment. Normally, we assume that we are minds that inhabit solid, three-dimensional bodies that move around a three-dimensional world, interacting with other solid bodies - such as the Earth, and tables, and chairs.
There are two levels of distancing ourselves from this background assumption. The first level is to recognise that our experiences are not veridical: the objects that seem to represent may not really be there. There is a second, deeper level, which is to recognise that the very concept of solid matter is incoherent: there simply cannot be a physical world out there.
The film takes us to the first level, and even here it is not comprehensive in its attack on naive realism. The world in which Neo, and the rest of humanity, initially lives is a virtual one; but he wakes up and finds himself in another world, which he is told is the real world. So the regression stops after a single leap. Whilst watching the film, I kept expecting it to end by revealing that the supposed real world - the on which the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar battle against the computers - was itself another virtual reality: that there was a second world beyond that one. And that there was yet another world beyond that one again. This is what happened, in a confused sort of way, at the end of David Cronenberg's film, "eXistenZ".
But that regression did not occur in "The Matrix". Maybe it will in the sequel. I fear, however, that the Hollywood men in suits decided that that would be too much of a head trip. Certainly, Cronenberg made a hash of the idea in his film. It is not, however, too hard a concept to handle. Given that the Wachowski brothers have a firmer grip on narrative that Cronenberg, I think they could have shown us an endless regress of virtual realities without losing the plot.
Nevertheless, from a philosophical point of view, the film has done a good job in placing in general circulation the idea that the world around does not necessarily have a physical basis. This is not, of course, a new idea. It is found in the ancient Upanishads of India, especially as codified in Shankara's commentary on them. Somewhat nearer to home, George Berkeley placed the virtuality of the everyday world at the centre of his philosophy - three hundred years before The Matrix hit the screens.
Qualia
It is clear that someone in the script-writing department had either
been doing some serious homework - or some serious thinking.
There is a good scene in the canteen, when the crew of the
Nebuchadnezzar are reflecting on the insipidity of their food.
One of the crew, Mouse, wonders how the robots figured out what different foods tasted like. How, for instance, could a mindless robot ever known what it is like to taste cooked chicken? As Mouse realised, they could never know that. Qualitative experiences - what philosophers call 'qualia' - can exist only in conscious minds. Since the computers are assumed to have only intelligence and not consciousness, they could never know what anything tastes like. So, Mouse concludes that perhaps the taste of chicken that everybody was experiencing in the virtual world had no resemblance at all to the real taste of chicken. The computers must have just made a guess about the taste when they
coded up the matrix.
But why just tastes? Surely the same applies to smells? And what about colours? How could a mindless computer ever know what it is really like to see the colour red, for instance? For sure, the computer would know all about the wavelength of light and how it affects the light-sensitive cells of the human retina. But the actual conscious experience of seeing the red colour itself? There is no way that the computer could ever know
about that. So the arrangement of colours in the virtuality could also have been completely different from what they used to be in the real world before the war. In the context of the film, however, they would find it difficult to pull off that stunt - just because the film itself shows (or, rather, purports to show us) what it is like
inside the virtuality. If "The Matrix" were a novel rather than a film, then the author could easily introduce the notion that all the sensory experiences - tastes, smells, colours - inside the virtuality could be completely different from those formerly experienced in the real world. In fact, if the directors had used monochrome film when showing scenes inside the virtual reality, and colour in the scenes of the reality, then
they could have introduced some notion of comprehensive shifts of qualia. (The Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky did this in his film "The Stalker", and the German-American director Wim Wenders did it in his film "Wings of Desire". Admittedly these were not virtual reality films, but they did deal with the concept of multiple phenomenal worlds.)
In a novel, we could go a step further. There is a rare psychological disorder called synaesthesia, in which sense data that most of us perceive in one faculty are actually experienced in another faculty. So, for instance, these people may see sounds, and hear colours. In the virtual reality created by the computers, we could imagine that the machines could have made a dog's ear of the coding, and made sounds visible and light audible. Needless to say, no Hollywood film is ever going to allow anything as weird as that - quite apart from the sheer technical difficulty.
There is a further consideration that arises here. How do we know that we all have the same experiences anyway? Maybe nature has herself already scrambled our qualia? Maybe the taste sensation that you get when you eat chicken is completely different from what someone else tastes? How could you ever tell? You cannot get inside the other person's mind and experience her sensations. So, maybe we all have systematically different fields of qualia already? The only way out of this conundrum is through telepathy - which is another can of worms.
Agents
One of the extraordinary ideas of the film are the agents - autonomous programs that present themselves inside the virtual reality of the matrix as secret agents dressed in black, with dark glasses and wired earphones.
This concept links in very nicely with the idea of a 'metamental daemon', which I propose in my book as a model for the true nature of phenomena that variously manifest themselves as angels, fairies, or ufos and aliens. The correspondence is made more acute by the presentation of these agents as 'men in black' (MIB). The MIB were first brought to the world's attention by the journalist John Keel in his book "UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse" (1970, reissued 1996). Basically, people who had close encounters with ufos or the associated aliens often had repeated visits by mysterious and untraceable men in black. In real life, the metamental daemons are not limited to the men in black, but
can appear in any form. Of course, in a film we need some convenient means of recognising these beings, hence the film's sentient agents always manifest themselves as men in black. Real life, however, is not that simple.
In the film, two distinct concepts are mixed up. On the one hand, there is the idea of a metamental daemon functioning as a 'strange manifestor' - presenting itself directly to the mind of the percipient as e.g. a man in black. On the other hand, there is the concept of possession - a discarnate mind taking over a body. I think it was just script-writing laziness that led them to meld these two ideas. It allows them to pull some cheap deus ex machina tricks in which agents can suddenly spring up anywhere. (Consider, for instance, the tubeway scene, in which a tramp is possessed by an agent.) Also, the scenes
in which we see the possessed person turning into an agent, or vice versa, are quite klunky: the special effects were not at their best in those morphing scenes.
Déjà vu
There is an odd scene in which Neo sees a cat walk past a door twice in
a few seconds, and describes it as déjà vu. This is explained by Trinity as a glitch in the matrix software, which apparently occurs when a change is made in the virtual reality code. In this case, the computer has suddenly bricked up the windows of the building in which they were standing.
First of all, as a point of terminology, what Neo experienced was not genuine déjà vu: that expression refers to the weird feeling that you are repeating an experience. It does not refer to actually seeing something happen again.
I'm not so sure about the basic idea here. It implies that the virtual reality is being operated by the computer in the same as if it were showing a three-dimensional
film, which is played in a predermined way. If you splice a film carelessly, you may indeed get a discontinuity: you might miss a bit out, or you might repeat a bit. The virtual reality, however, cannot be like that. Our lives are not predetermined: life is not pre-scripted. The virtual reality provides an environment in which players such as people and cats can engage with the apparent environment and with each other.
So I see no reason why making a change to the environment would - or indeed could - cause any events to be repeated.
So, what is the matrix really?
According to Berkeley, and a lot of other mystics and metaphysicians, this world - the one you are in right now - is illusory. The ancient Hindu term for this was 'maya'. The actual experiences are, of course real - but the physical world that they seem to depict is just not there.
What is driving this virtual reality, then? Well, within the Vedanta system of the Hindu religion, the ultimate agency behind the maya is 'Brahman'. According to Berkeley, who lived in a Christian community in the eighteenth century, it is God. In both cases, however, it is clear that the entity driving the virtual reality does not have the
anthropomorphic qualities that traditional religion ascribes to God. For this reason, I have called it the 'metamind' in my book.
So, what is the metamind? The metamind is a vast mind, or at least a mind-like entity, that created the whole of the manifest world and is running the show even now. Within this virtual reality there are small, ordinary minds such as you and me. We communicate
normally via the metamind, so that we have the illusion that we are communicating via a physical medium, such as sound waves, or the internet connection.
This virtual reality is generally tied to fixed rules, which scientists have
codified as the laws of physics. There are, however, what might be term loop-holes: 'nomological interstices' or gaps through which ordinary minds can operate
outside the limits that are normally set by the metamind. There are some references to this in the film. For instance, Neo is taught that he can use his belief system to acquire and exercise paranormal powers such as telekinesis and very rapid bodily movements.
In parapsychology laboratories around the world, including Edinburgh University and Princeton University, it has been established that mental intentions can modify the occurrence of random events. This is inexplicable from the standpoint of physics, but it can be comprehended if we accept the Berkeleian theory that this world is a virtual reality with nomological interstices. I go into this in more detail in the book.
Hearing voices
Telephones play a key role in the "The Matrix". Early in the film, Neo receives a mobile 'phone in the post. As soon as he has unpacked it, it rings -- and the voice of Morpheus guides him through the maze of office furniture toward an escape route. This is a metaphor for the inner voice that is used by human intuition, by angels and daemons, and even by God. Socrates famously had a daemon that would speak to him at crucial moments, and throughout history people have received guidance seemingly from unseen intelligences -- through an inner voice. In the office scene, Neo has to place his faith in what Morpheus tells him. At first, of course, Neo is sceptical: he has no reason to trust this strange voice. He is won over, however, when Morpheus informs him that the Agents have come for him. Neo stands up and peers over the office partition, and sees the Agents. With that confirmation, Neo places his trust in the disembodied voice. This mirrors the pattern of events that often recurs in real life encounters with inter-dimensional entities such as angels and aliens. They offer a prophecy that comes true, and thereby establish the percipient's trust. In the film, Neo is guided completely by the voice: because he is crouching below the level of the office partitions, he cannot see where the Agents are, so every step he takes is directed by Morpheus. This is a very vivid metaphor for God's guidance through the inner voice: the individual must listen attentively to that voice and follow its every instruction even though the individual is not in a position to see the bigger picture. Finally, Neo loses the 'phone and loses his nerve -- as he is asked to climb out onto the balcony. This, again, mirrors the sense of being lost that people can have when they stop following the inner voice.
Throughout the film, the telephone serves as the only communications link between the virtual reality inside the Matrix and the authentic reality outside it. Why? For much the same reason that the inner voice is used as a channel of communication between our world and the realm of inter-matricial entities. It does not disrupt the nomological web that constitutes the infrastructure of the matrix. Of course, there needs to be some perceptible channel of communication, so there needs to be some format that presents itself to the sense organs of the percipient. Well, one way would be for the communicant to materialise an avatar in the virtual world: to create an actual three-dimensional form. Each time that happens, however, there is a violation of the basic laws governing the world. Although the world inside the Matrix is virtual, it must nonetheless obey the laws of physics, such as gravity and the conservation of mass and energy, otherwise it would dissolve into chaos. This is just like any virtual reality system in an amusement arcade: it must operate under fixed laws in order to function at all, and the closer those laws reflect the natural laws of physics, the more realistic will be its look and feel. Suddenly to create a solid, three-dimensional body inside the matrix, however, breaches the laws of conservation of mass and energy: it breaks of the rules that have been programmed into the virtual reality. Well, such holes in the nomological fabric can obviously be patched up. But they are anomalies: they are not part of the normal run of events. Precisely because they trigger the matrix's self-repair mechanisms, they draw the control system's attention to the materialisation.
Why, then, do they use land-lines at all? In the film, the land-lines are necessary for retrieving people back from the Matrix. We may assume that they are also used for placing people into the Matrix (although curiously we never see anybody arrive inside the Matrix). So, let us look more closely at these exits and entries.
Fast and loose exits
Neo and his colleagues can leave the virtual reality by being called up a telephone line. This may at first seem a very odd arrangement. Cronenberg had a much more obvious exit routine in his "eXistenZ". There, a player can stop the virtuality game by crying "eXistenZ is paused!", at which point the player's virtual body slumps down as if dead, and the mind's stream of consciousness finds itself back in the parent -- immersed once more in familiar surroundings. In "The Matrix", the virtual body completely disappears. Why? As far as the virtual world is concerned, the body is just another physical object. Why should it vanish when the mind exits the matrix?
Disappearing bodies always bother me in films. Why? Well, firstly it is a massive violation of the law of conservation of mass and energy. Yes, I acknowledge that these disappearances take place in a virtual world and that the mass and energy that are lost are only virtual. Nevertheless, a basic premise of robust virtual systems is that the laws of nature are respected. There are, as I have said, nomological gaps in the world -- but a body cannot disappear through a gap: such a disappearance tears a gash through the nomological fabric of the virtual reality. Disappearances are therefore massively implausible.
A corollary of this is the bang problem. If a physical body is simply annihilated,
if it simply vanishes, then the space it previously occupied would become
a vacuum, and the surrounding air - which is at atmospheric pressure, of course -
would rush in. This would almost certainly cause a loud noise. Yet disappearances
on film are always silent. Also, I have worries about the computer correctly
drawing the boundary of the body that is to be disappeared. The person's shoes
are to disappear, but not the piece of ground he is standing on. What if he is
standing on a piece of chewing gum? Would the chewing gum disappear too? If not,
why not? But if the chewing gum disappears, does that mean the whole pavement would
have to disappear too, as it is stuck to it? Some pretty smart processing is
required to get the boundary of the disappearance right.
I remember times when I've been filling colour into a drawn shape on a graphics package, and I accidentally left a tiny gap in the boundary that I had drawn. Suddenly the colour leaks out through the hole and fills the whole screen. Likewise, my concern is that the chewing gum could act as a bridge and cause not only the person to vanish, but also the chewing gum, along with the pavement that is attached to chewing gum, and the whole city that is attached to the pavement, and indeed the whole world.
To avoid this outcome, the exit process must rigorously follow the object-oriented architecture. Each visible object in the virtual reality is, we may suppose, represented inside the computer's database by a 'data object'. The data object contains all the information about the structure and disposition of the object and how it should be rendered. It can be moved around inside the virtual reality by changing its spatial coordinates. The data object would include precise boundaries of itself. In the context of the film, those boundaries would include, for instance, Neo's shoes but not the chewing gum he was standing on. When the exit occurs, that whole object would be removed, but not the surroundin objects. Thus, by shifting from an atomic model of the virtual world to an object-oriented model, we can see how fast entries and exits can make sense. (I discuss this in more detail in my essay in "Taking the Red Pill", see
www.benbellabooks.com).
Nonetheless, on balance, my feeling is that Cronenberg's exit routine is best: only the mind departs, and the body simply loses its animation. This seems the more elegant solution.
What about real life? What happens when a mind leaves this virtual reality
-- the one you are in right now? Not very much, in fact. During an out-of-body experiences, which is a good approximation to exiting the normal virtuality, the body just lies there in a relaxed and unconscious state. Likewise, during dreams - even in lucid dreaming -- when the mind completely logs out from this virtuality, the rest of
us still see the body lying there.
Fast entries
Why do we never see the crew members of the Nebuchadnezzar arrive inside the Matrix? Compare the process of exit with the supposed process of entry. In an exit, a land-line telephone rings, the person picks it up, and then dematerialises. In an entry, the telephone rings and -- what? There is nobody there to answer it!
It might be that the Wachowski brothers could not not figure out how the entry could logically happen, so they simply glossed over it. A plausible answer is, of course: an answering machine. All that is required is a piece of 'data terminal equipment', a device of some sort that detect and amplify the minute electrical currents in the telephone line.
In both the fast exits and the fast entries, however, we are left wondering what the role of the telephone line is. The entries and exits are, conceptually, quite unlike the teletransporter techology of Star Trek. When Captain Kirk dematerialises from the Enterprise and materialises on the planet's surface, his body -- in form of information encoded in an energy stream -- physically travels through the intervening space. When people enter or exit the matrix, however, they are not travelling from one part of the matrix world to another. Rather, they are arriving from a realm that is wholly outside the three-dimensional space of the matrix. So, we can forget about any naive notion that Neo and the others are tranported down the telephone line in the form of digital pulses.
Rather, the data object that represents Neo's body is inserted directly into the database of the Matrix. It is like uploading a web page using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) on the internet. The role of the telephone is to provide an addressing mechanism.
Just as, when you transfer a file by FTP, you must give the address in the form of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), so when Neo is uploaded into the Matrix, the crew of the Nebuchdnezzar must give the address in form of a telephone number. But, the address on its own is not enough. If you try to upload a file to some arbitrary location in the internet, you will not succeed. There must be an FTP server at that address, and it must have an account that you can use. That might be either a guest account that does not require a password, or your own personal account. Likewise, in the Matrix, the telephone line acts as a 'materialisation server'.
The data terminating equipment (DTE) at the end of the telephone line can be used to materialise Neo and the others because it can receive command messages that have been inserted into the telephone line.
The DTE, like any other object in the virtual world, has a corresponding data object inside the Matrix computer system. This responds to messages that either request changes of state or request response. Now, an obvious but special feature of any piece of telecommunications equipment, is that it communicates with a remote object, whilst the intervening transmission is not normally observed. So the two software modules that simulate the telephone handsets must have internal reference pointers to each other. The Nebuchadnazzer's computer exploits this characteristic to navigate to the place where the avatar is to materialise.
Assessment
As a film, "The Matrix" is flawed by emotionless acting and lack of psychological realism, and the violence is gratuitous and stupidly sanitised. Nevertheless, it is an excellent dramatic presentation of immensely important philosophical ideas. It is worth going to see, in order to mull over the ideas. The sound track is pretty cool, too.
Official sites
- The Matrix
Warner Brothers main site for The Matrix is
www.whatisthematrix.com. This contains the usual kinds of marketing material for the film. You can purchase the film, or the soundtrack, from Amazon by clicking on the following links. Of course, you place orders online from anywhere in world, but the postage will be less if you order from the country nearest to you.
