The Matrix cometh – and you will get plugged in

Who has not seen the movie “The Matrix”? As incredible as it seems, there still seem to be those who have not. I guess none of my readers responds to this challenge so I skip the storyline and the cast.

One of the defining scenes of the first installment was when Cypher (the traitor) had a meeting with Agent Smith in a posh restaurant. As they sat and ate, they contemplated the details of a deal they had been working on.

Cypher was about to deliver the resistance fighters around Morpheus to the agents. In exchange for his treachery, he would be re-plugged into the Matrix and live a life of riches, pleasures, and endless enjoyment happily ever after. It would be a virtual life of course as everything in the Matrix was, but to him, it would be no less real than a full bones and flesh existence. Minus all the stuff he never liked in his life. The Matrix would allow the fulfillment of even the wildest dreams.

Still, it’s not real, you might say and who could want to exchange the real thing (flesh, bones, hardship, disease but also the good moments like the love of a wife or kids) for some virtual, vaporous, fickle dream? The answer will shock you. Probably more than 90% of the world’s population would gladly do that. Yeah, there is a 9 in 1 chance that you would want that as well.

A huge part of the world’s population (that includes most of today’s naysayers) would jump into such a virtual life with both feet if they really could do so realistically now. Don’t believe it? Let’s get specific.

In my teenage years, I read a little booklet on self-development. It was my first real self-development book and the beginning of a long journey to build myself and a mind I would be proud to call my own.

The author had divvied up all people on planet Earth as belonging into one of 3 very distinct categories.

According to him, there would be

• Those who want to be DUMB;
• Those who want to be SMART;
• Those who chose to be WISE;

He went on pretending that about 80% of the world’s population belongs to the DUMB camp. 18% to the SMART camp and just about 2% were truly WISE.

He furthermore stated that those proclivities were not genetic but that every individual was entirely free to join any of those groups at any moment. One just had to decide for himself – no greater authority would be needed to seal the change or to document it.

Dumb were supposed to be those who needed someone telling them what to do, when, and how. Smart were supposed to be those who needed someone they could tell what to do, when, and how. And wise were supposed to be those who made their own decisions and lived by them.

What does all this have to do with the Matrix and Cypher?

Cypher was dumb. He was not unintelligent. He had quite a lot of technical knowledge and was certainly capable of very complex stratagems and schemes. He was a highly involved and motivated person with at least a passive interest in things around him and he was even able to wisecrack.

But he desperately longed to be rid of all responsibilities and chores of a real-life and craved a sorrow-free, carefree life where he had nothing to worry about. He was willing to take quite considerable risks in betraying his closest friends and companions and was pretty entrepreneurial when it came to outwitting them.

The guy was a strategic planner and still, he wanted a life that was easier on him. So does the bulk of the population. Not sticking their head out and avoiding being singled out for anything is supremely important to most people no matter what creed, color, or country they originate from. It’s the ultimate equalizer.

But those smart also crave a system like the Matrix. They are as dependent on those dumbs as those are dependent on the smart-cracks. Imagine someone in search of someone else he could give orders but he does not find any. Ain’t that dumb?

This would mean that 98% of any population would welcome a system that assures them of a carefree life. They would happily trade freedom and self-determination for a life of carefree dependence which the Matrix is.

And if we look at developmental trends in daily news, this looks just about right.

But I don’t want to debate numbers here. A couple of percentage points up or down will not change trends.

My real issue is – are people going to trade life as they know it right now for one almost permanently hooked into a virtual environment? One does not have to go to the Matrix to imagine it. The Matrix is a somewhat extreme version where nobody has a real choice.

The movie Surrogate with Bruce Willis offers another example that feels much closer to what we would describe as our daily grunt. It’s unrealistic on many counts but the basic tenet is that people spend the majority of their time is so-called stimulation (stim) chairs and experience the outside world through sophisticated robots, their surrogates.

These surrogates would enable humans all pleasures in the perfect safety of their homes. Some of course would reject plugging themselves into a stim-chair and want to go real.

But judging by how many people spend a large part of their wake time in a virtual world through smartphones and computers, I am tempted to believe that acceptance would be quick and widespread.

Let’s be frank – no real-world pleasure will be able to match to sheer variety and endless adventures a fully virtual environment would offer. If you can be everything in the virtual world and the virtual world becomes indistinguishable from the real world such as it was in the Matrix, why should people choose to have the dull real version?

There will always be some but the majority will plug in.

This has extreme consequences for our world. If we spend most of our wake time in a stym-chair, the amount of space one single person needs to live a full social life will be much more limited. I can imagine people taking very small apartments consisting of a bed, a stym chair, a loo, and a shower. A couple of square meters will suffice. Japanese apartments in Tokyo will appear parlor-like compared to those closets.

Also, if eating in the virtual world gives one the same pleasures (or better) than chowing your daily BigMac, people will eat less and go on a very different diet. Having a date online will not require real restaurant space or taxi services at night. It won’t even require a real person to share it with you.

Don’t believe it? Have you ever used intelligent systems today? They can fool you into believing they are real – don’t they? Well OK, not really but trust me. Give it 10 years and they will. Especially combined with high resolution, high fidelity Virtual Reality eye- and ear-wear like an Oculus Rift on steroids.  Judging by how many people prefer online intercourse to the real thing today, just imagine how this is going to be in 10 years or more.

But if everyone is going to get permanently plugged into a Matrix-style VR environment – where are all the people going to be? Will we need all those streets, subways, restaurants, hotels, airplanes, and whatever else we think we cannot be without anymore? Think about that.

The Matrix is closer than you think. It will hit you and you will not want to get out anymore.