The Matrix of Infrastructure

Written a few years back, lightly edited.

I was re-watching The Matrix Reloaded today; it was actually the first time I had seen it since its original theatrical run a few years back.  It is still, IMO, the best of the trilogy.  Anyway, as I re-watched it, something in it struck me that I had forgotten and which reminded me of my earlier post about infrastructure.

It is the scene about a quarter of the way into the movie where Neo goes walking in Zion, being unable to sleep, and runs into Councillor Harmann.  They chat for a bit, then go down to the engineering level.  Remember, Zion is the city of humans who have been freed from the Matrix.  It is deep underground, and thus requires complicated life-support systems to provide air, water recycling, food (grown hydroponically?  synthesized?), and so on.

The Councillor waxes philosophical, noting that the populace of Zion is just as dependent on their machines as the humans still unknowingly plugged into the Matrix are dependent upon the machines that run the Matrix.  He says, “There is so much in this world that I do not understand. See that machine? It has something to do with recycling our water supply. I have absolutely no idea how it works. But I do understand the reason for it to work.” 

This scene struck me as fascinating.  So much science fiction posits a future with incredible technology, only to have the technology so posited function in an essentially magical way.  There are never factories or repairmen (unless they are of the ilk of Star Trek‘s Scotty, able to fix anything on a moment’s notice with scrap parts and chewing gum!  Wish I had mechanics like that when my car breaks down!), nothing ever breaks down, anyway (except when dramatic tension is needed), there are no blue-collar workers, everything seems to be free, and energy seems unlimited (Anybody out there realize just how much energy a Transporter or a Replicator from Star Trek or a Stargate from the eponymous show would actually use, if it operated on a regular basis?  We’re talking on the order of several times more than is used in a typical day on the whole planet at current rates!).  It struck me as refreshing to have a movie acknowledge the vast, complex systems that we never see and often don’t understand, but which are vital to life as we know it.

Interesting too to compare such systems to the Matrix.  We are all “plugged in”, if not to the Matrix, at least to complex systems on whose smooth functioning our comfort, our livelihoods, and often our very lives depend.  As I pointed out in the earlier post, we never even realize this dependence until the system fails, as in the power failure in the Northeast a few years ago, or the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  In my opinion, the two greatest questions we face as a society are one, how do we fortify the infrastructure against such catastrophic failures; and two, how can we modify our lives as individuals and as a society so that we are less “plugged in” to begin with?  With oil prices likely never to come down again, this latter question is especially timely and urgent.  Will we, as a society, take the red pill, or will we be like Cypher from the original Matirx, perfectly content to be plugged in to the Matrix, content to let the good times roll, not worrying about the real world, until disaster strikes?  Food for thought.