4 Concepts in Real World inspired by The Matrix
After a 18 year-old long wait, dystopia enthusiasts finally rejoiced after the release of the fourth film in the legendary Matrix franchise, The Matrix Resurrections. So in the meantime, do you want to know how much Neo and Trinity have impacted our real world?
1. Law: The Matrix Defense
In the Matrix, reality is a computer generation and the real world is different from what humans perceive reality to be.
In the legal world, the Matrix defense is a term used by a defendant when they committed a crime as they believed they were in the simulated world of the Matrix, and not in the real world. So they try to convince the prosecutor that they never intended death for their victim. They just believed that the victim is alive in the other reality.
In fact, this insanity defense has been used in many cases where the accused were sent to asylums and care facilities instead of jails. Some of them include:
- 2000: Vadim Mieseges of San Francisco offered a Matrix explanation to police after chopping up his landlady, and was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial.
- 2002: In yet another case of shooting a landlady, Tonda Lynn Ansley of Ohio was not found guilty on grounds of insanity.
The same year, the case of Lee Malvo came in the news. He had participated in the sniper shootings of 30 victims in 2002, and included references to the Matrix. He reportedly shouted, “Free yourself from the Matrix,” from his cell after his arrest, and told FBI agents to watch the film if they wanted to understand him.
Also Matrix series time and again emphasises on deja vu and other “glitches” as signs that the Matrix is messing up, and exposes it to be a computer simulation. In the reddit arena, r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix is a subreddit that collects stories about people globally running into weird life events that they feel qualify as the “program” messing up.
2. Philosophy: The Simulation Hypothesis
Remember the red pill and blue pill offered by Morpheous to the one, Neo?
Well, as per simulation theory states that if we take the red pill and step through the looking glass, we are all likely living in an extremely powerful computer program, like the Matrix.
Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom talked about this in 2003 in his seminal paper, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”. He argued that if humans survive thousands of years to reach a ‘posthuman state’ — one in which we have acquired most of the advanced technological capabilities consistent with physical laws and and energy constraints — it is very likely that they would have the capabilities to run ancestral simulations. The biggest odds being, we are products of that very simulation.
Even present day space lord and sci-fi geek, Elon Musk says,
“ If you assume any rate of improvement at all, games will eventually be indistinguishable from reality, We’re most likely in a simulation.”
He went on to give an example in one of his interviews, “Forty years ago, we had Pong, two rectangles and a dot … That is what games were. Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it’s getting better every year.”
3. Pop Culture: Bullet Time Technique
Also known as a time slice, it is a visual effect created by detaching the time and space of a camera (you watching the above picture of Neo), from those of its visible subject (Neo stopping the bullets).
This gives the scene the ability to move at a normal speed, while events in it are slowed. This is nearly impossible with conventional slow motion — the physical camera will have to move super speedily.
So the specific term, bullet time, was first used with reference to the first Matrix film, before becoming popular in series and movies.
4. Video Games: Virtual Camera
As opposed to movie makers, virtual camera system creators handle a world that is unpredictable as it’s interactive. This is due to the simple fact, that is not possible to know where the player is going to move in the next few seconds. Thus, the movements cannot be planned, as film makers do. In order to solve this issue, the virtual camera relies on AI to select the most appropriate shots.
Taking this forward in the modern virtual cinematography, the second movie, The Matrix Reloaded (2003) uses this concept— When Neo fights 100+ Agent Smiths and the beginning of the final showdown in third movie, The Matrix Revolutions (2003), where Agent Smith’s cheekbone gets punched in by Neo, leaving the digital look-alike unharmed.
In other words, these scenes managed to reach such a huge level of realism, that it was difficult for even the observant audience to notice that they were watching a shot created entirely by visual effects artists using 3D computer graphics tools.
References
- https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/the-matrix-defense-was-nearly-used-in-the-joshua-cooke-case
- https://builtin.com/hardware/simulation-theory
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/
- https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/what-simulation-hypothesis-why-some-think-life-simulated-reality-ncna913926
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_(franchise)
- https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20211207-the-matrix-and-the-sci-fi-stories-that-became-a-reality
