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The Matrix offers an Ultimately Utopian or Dystopian view?

Does The Matrix offer an ultimately utopian or dystopian view of information-technology?

The Matrix is a postmodern film about life in the year 2199. The word matrix in terms of computers is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “an interconnected array of diodes, cores, or other circuit elements that has a number of inputs and outputs and somewhat resembles a lattice or grid in its circuit design or physical construction”¹. The film questions whether or not we live in reality or we live in a virtual world. The film claims that we (the human race) live inside our minds and that we are actually plugged into a computer programmer in which we believe we are experiencing reality. The film is based on the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) has taken over the world and that there was a war between the humans and the computers. During the war the humans “scorched the sky” as they thought that the computers would not survive without solar power, however the computers discovered that humans are like batteries and they would provide enough energy to support them. This led to humans being ‘farmed’ by the computers to provide energy. The main character in the film, Neo, is freed from the womb-like capsule his body lives in, by Morpheus who believes that Neo is ‘the one’ who will free the human race.

The film is about information-technology and what can happen if it goes wrong. Because of the amount if information-technology in the film, it links in to postmodernity and the film offers a very postmodern view of the world and our society, especially in the west. Postmodernity is a complex theory that questions whether or not something even exists, “our reality is little more than a consensual hallucination” (William Gibson). Postmodernism is a term that describes the age after the social and technological upheaval of modernism. Information-technology and the media dominate the post-modern world. Information-technology, the Internet, MTV, virtual reality, genetically modified crops, Disneyland, QVC, and The Matrix can all be considered as symptoms of postmodernity. Modernity was a period of change during the early 1900s. During this time everything seemed new. Cinema was becoming more and more popular and also industry and art was changing a dramatic speed, “everywhere life is rushing insanely like a Calvary charge, and it vanishes cinematographically, like trees and silhouettes along a road,” (Octave Mirbeau, 1908). However by...

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