By SCOTT DEWING
Published: October 2002

I RECENTLY HAD THE OPPORTUNITY to watch the movie The Matrix for the 100th time. Well, I’m not actually sure if I’ve watched The Matrix 100 times, but I’ve watched it enough times that I’ve lost count. So maybe 100. Why do I watch The Matrix over and over again? I’d be a liar if I said that watching Trinity perform some serious Kung-Fu moves in skin-tight, black leather pants was not a factor. There’s definitely that and the cool, syncopated, choreographic splendor of the numerous shoot-out scenes that flow like a high-tech version of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on drugs.

I revisit The Matrix regularly because of all that, but mostly because of its theme of humanity v. technology. For those of you who have been living in a cave for the past few years, The Matrix is a sci-fi movie that portrays a dark, dystopian future in which artificial intelligence (AI) machines have taken over the world and relegated human beings to mere power-sources that “feed” the AI machines. Humans are grown in sprawling fields then harvested and placed in life-supporting incubators with dozens of tubes plugged into their body. The biggest tube goes into the back of the head. This is what plugs a body’s mind into The Matrix, a computer simulation of the world as it was during the 21st century. The AI machines discovered that a body with an occupied mind is more efficient and lasts longer. People go about their lives, but it’s all happening within a dream world. There are, however, some minds that become acutely aware that something is amiss. These select few awake from the dream, escape from their incubators and band together to fight against the machines.

The Matrix was a box-office hit. For sure, Trinity’s tight leather pants, the shoot-out scenes and high-tech cinematography had a lot to do with that. But I believe that what made The Matrix such a popular movie (and what has sustained in as a sci-fi classic) was the theme of humanity v. technology. Whether or not viewers realized this on a conscious level or it remained buried but squirming about in their subconscious doesn’t matter. What matters is that it was there and powerful. But why are we so moved by this theme? I would argue that it is because we are living within an era of incredible technological advancement. This is not to say that the present era we live within is anymore important than those that have passed and those that are yet to come. But as we stumble into the 21st century, we are approaching the apex of what some have termed the Technological Revolution. Just as the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution forever changed the course of human history, so it will be with the Technological Revolution.

One of my favorite books about the future and the Technological Revolution is The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil. For me, one of the most disturbing passages in the book was the following:

If the machines [i.e., computer systems, robots and nanobots with AI] are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines behave…the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control.

I agree with the above statement. Machines are continually being placed in control of functions that were once the domain of human beings. I’m not terribly disturbed by the thought of machines increasingly being in control of things. Human beings have been in control for quite sometime and, in my humble opinion, have a shoddy record at best. What disturbs me about that the passage was that it is a direct quote from The Unabomber Manifesto by Theodore Kaczynski. Kaczynski created bombs and mailed them to prominent scientists, killing three people and injuring many others during a 17-year terror campaign. Kaczynski is clearly a Luddite and believes that machines being in control is a very bad scenario for the future of humanity. Perhaps he envisions a dark, dystopian future similar to that portrayed in The Matrix. Rather than waiting for the machines to take over, however, Kaczynski decided that it would be more effective to kill off the human beings who would create the machines.

The opening paragraph to The Unabomber Manifesto reads, “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in ‘advanced’ countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation.” Kaczynski had come to certain conclusions about the role of technology and what the future would be like if we stay upon our present course. His conclusions became convictions. Those convictions resulted in very grave actions and consequences.

One of Yogi Berra’s many clever witticisms was, “The past just ain’t what it used to be.” As we hurtle forward through life, the past piles up behind us, sometimes like shiny trophies on a mantle, other times like disastrous car accidents. Looking to the future and trying to imagine what it will be like, I draw upon everything from the past as well as everything that is happening in the present. But as I sit and postulate everything from a dark, dystopian future like The Matrix to the possibility of a bright utopian, technology-empowered Eden, I can’t help but think that no matter what future I imagine for the sole heartbeat that is my life or for the mass of humanity, it is most likely that the future I imagine just ain’t what it’s going to be.

One of the taglines for The Matrix was, “The Fight for the Future Begins”. I can’t predict the future any better than the next hack, but I can say this with certainty and conviction: if there truly is a “fight for the future”, that fight does not begin sometime in the future when the machines take over. It’s already begun. Technology is a double-edged sword. It can be both beneficial and detrimental. For example, Kaczynski used technological advancements in bomb-making to kill the creators of the technological advancements he feared. The bitter hypocrisy of this is not lost on me.

Unlike Kaczynski, I don’t believe that technology or technological advancement in and of itself is evil. Only people, like Kaczynski, have the capacity to be evil. If the day comes when we’ve created intelligent machines with the capacity to think and make decisions autonomous of their creators, I can only hope that they do a better job at running things than the human beings who made them.