25 years on, who will give us the Matrix?
The renowned science fiction film “The Matrix” from 1999 features Neo, the protagonist and hacker, who enters the matrix and acquires any weaponry he desires to rescue his mentor. Clad in a black tunic, he proceeds to storm a federal building, unleashing his newly acquired arsenal on the security establishment, often performing gravity-defying leaps and stunts.
This make believe world, one we could only dream of, is a lot closer to reality today. In fact, if you’re a gamer, you will insist that it already exists in some form.
Let’s swoop down on some of the most interesting parts of this film.
1. Load the Flying Chopper Program
Plot 1. An interesting chase involving Neo and Trinity (his mate) fleeing robotic agents leads them to a roof, where a helicopter awaits. Trinity, unable to pilot the chopper herself, requests her teammate on the phone to load the flying-chopper-program into her memory (her own brain)!
Yes! That was the request. It was, after all, science fiction.
My thoughts drift back to the dimly lit cinemas of the 1990s, where I first saw this film. Looking back, the internet was still new, the data revolution was unheard of, GPUs were limited to video games, SSDs were expensive, and desktop Intel CPUs still accounted for the majority of our processing power.
Will we ever be able to load data into our human memory?
Today, technologies like the Brain Computer Interface (BCI) have brought this ability closer to us than before, although it is still an area of on-going research.
So what is the Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology?
Using BCI, signals that flow between the brain’s neural circuits are detected, extracted into a separate system, and then processed. To put it simply, this technology is miraculous and, like most AI, hard to understand because it can precisely decipher what the user wishes to say from his thoughts and translate that into an action on a different device.
Is this real? Have we seen this in action before?
Well, you would have noticed that renowned quantum physicist Stephen Hawkins used the brain-computer interface (BCI) if you had seen him in the latter ten years of his life slumped over in his wheelchair from the motor neuron illness that had wrecked his body. He relied on a BCI system for the majority of his final lectures and interviews. In addition to many other things, he had a vocal synthesizer that provided him with the voice we are all accustomed to, and in fact, he could even initiate actions from his cheek.
Although BCI is still years away from reality, the challenge is being able to interact bidirectionally with human memories using an augmented AI chip. Research in this area is currently underway, including Neuralink’s BMI research, Paradromics, and NextMind’s wearable brain-sensing device, among others.
2. Is the Matrix actually the Metaverse?
Plot 2: Neo, the main character in the film, has to choose between a green pill and a red pill. With the green pill, he forgets everything that brought him to that point, and his life goes on as normal. With the red pill, however, his whole worldview changes, and he enters the matrix.
Of course, there are no points for guessing which choice he made.
The definition of the matrix, according to Morpheus (Lawrence Fishbourne), is pretty simple:
It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Given all that’s happening on our planet today, I’d wager that a lot of the unsatisfied folks would somehow prefer the option of an alternate universe like this.
Does a world like the matrix exist already?
Well, if you’re a gamer, this world came about some time ago. Firms such as Roblox, Unity, Epic Games, Activision, etc. offer single-player and even multi-player games today, including immersive games such as Call of Duty, Fortnite, Minecraft, and so on.
Immersion games like these can give players the impression that they are actually plugged into another world (just like the matrix) when they require them to wear headsets.
Are you saying that gamers built the metaverse?
Nope !! I am simply stating that gaming systems with 3D functionality and devices to support an immersive experience were here long before the term “metaverse” was invented. The main goal of gaming systems was to entice users to stay on their platforms for extended periods of time. To this end, they developed a variety of features.
So how is a gaming universe similar to the Matrix?
That’s simple. The actors in the movie “The Matrix” plugged themselves into the system using an alien device that directly connected to their cerebellum. This technology also connected other participants to the system. They could talk, eat, and even attack and kill each other. Today’s gaming systems primarily focus on gaming, concerts, and corporate team meetings, among other activities. In the matrix, one could fall in love, consume food, and do a far greater number of things than we do in the real world.
In short, it was a world within a world.
In reality, we aren’t there yet. Perhaps the bigger question is, do we even want to get there?
Are we building anything closer to this?
After renaming Meta and investing USD 10 billion in the metaverse, much of the initial excitement has subsided. After quarters of losses, Meta has now pivoted to artificial intelligence and scaled back their metaverse project significantly.
Meanwhile, here are some other hopefuls trying their hands at building the next big thing (metaverse):
- Unity Technologies: — A big game developer platform, one of the oldest in the game. This platform allows you to build a game (2D / 3D) on your own. They have hundreds of templates and have simplified game development to a large degree over time. Whether they are survival games or strategy games, you can also build virtual reality capability into the game. They are one of the largest gaming platforms available today.
- Meta:—Needs no introduction here. Horizon Worlds, it’s metaverse ship sailed from their shores, but within a short time, it was taking in water. Meta has been losing money since its Reality Labs division started building Horizon. To power this initiative, it has invested tons of money in acquiring assets like the Occulus headset. According to reports, they have started making money but are still running losses.
- Microsoft: — They certainly have their own tools. Microsoft created Microsoft Mesh to provide users with a virtual environment based on their collaborative software, Microsoft Teams. Office 365 does not automatically include Mesh; while it offers a 6-month free trial, it is not free. Microsoft’s ability to promote the usage of avatars and immersive spaces in its team meetings was meant to woo the corporates.
- Sotatek: — This Vietnamese company has been able to find a niche in the otherwise Western-led metaverse development market. It has the expertise to build a variety of metaverses across different industries. Their expertise in virtual reality, augmented reality, blockchain, and artificial intelligence puts them in a unique position to deliver solutions in this part of the world.
3. The Common Enemy — The Virus
Plot 3: His name was Agent Smith, and he was the main antagonist of the film with that dreary, monotonous voice. They built him as an agent (a program) to control the system and keep humanity in check. At the end of the first part, he morphs into a virus. Just like a virus, it replicates and then threatens to wipe out the entire system, including the humans and the machines that created it.
The common enemy is always eliminated first.
Cybersecurity, threat detection, ransomware attacks — the digital world we live in today is so full of it. So much so that certifications for ethical hacking are now on the rise, along with the salaries of skilled individuals in this domain.
Digital thieves are not your bank robber break-in-and-getaway crooks of yesterday. These are educated individuals who understand networking protocols, IP addresses, subnets, how information flows through the networks, and how to detect loopholes in the system.
Malware, a type of software that attacks and compromises systems, is responsible for most of the biggest hacks that occur today. Some cases, like ransomware attacks, have the ability to completely lock out systems until the hackers receive a payment.
The public cloud, like it or not, has now emerged as a new frontier for these attackers, since a lot of our private information invariably ends up there.
Despite the fact that public cloud vendors have their own security tools and checks in place, a new breed of companies have risen to meet the challenge: -
- Cloudflare: — This company’s products are known for preventing DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks and malware attacks. It also has a robust firewall and a Domain Naming Service (DNS) that is relatively fast. In a recent report, DDoS attacks surged in 2024, indicating the growing tribe of unwarranted hackers.
- Crowdstrike:— This company is right up there in the Gartner Leader Quadrant for endpoint protection platforms! These days, even the weakest link, such as a laptop or mobile device at the network’s edge, can launch attacks, but their next-generation anti-virus will detect them.
- Palo Alto Networks:—This company uses deep learning techniques to prevent unknown evasive commands, as well as to control attacks and exploit attempts in real-time. They have a multi-layered approach to detecting threats, as well as the necessary technologies to support them.
There are lots of existing companies that have also upgraded their security products and infrastructure, such as Cisco, Microsoft, and Broadcom, but now appear to be lagging behind these upstarts.
Almost 25 years ago, “The Matrix” hit the big screens, and it took so long for us to get a glimpse of what living inside it may be like. Of course, we may never have electronics plugged into our cerebellum yet, and a chip inside our brain is still some time away.
As you can see from the above, there are various firms working on different specialties.
Who are the candidates for creating a matrix similar to what we saw on the big screen?
- Microsoft — They have the infrastructure, the artificial intelligence know-how, the key scientists, the tools, and whatever else. In fact, they have all the elements lined up to dominate this space.
- Apple—Yes. They were always in the game. Their loyal fan base, their secure closed ecosystem, and their superior and premium product line-up put them in a good position to deliver.
- NVIDIA — How can we overlook the latest entrant? In the AI space, they have the infrastructure, the margins, and an indominable lead. They even have products like the Omniverse that are well-suited for this.
- Meta — They coined the term metaverse, and they’re certainly getting their name on the board here. They have been gobbling up GPUs and data center infrastructure as of late. Something is clearly afoot.
You might also have noticed that every company on the aforementioned list has surpassed the $2 trillion market cap sometime! Indeed, it would cost an enormous amount of money to construct a metaverse of this scale.
Of course, for now, the easiest way to experience something close to it is to buy the latest gaming console and probably an accompanying VR headset.
Now put them on, close your eyes to the world we live in, and open them in the metaverse!
