The Matrix Online

And so it has begun...

The "monster" described in The Matrix films has taken its first step into actualization. In case you haven't heard, Monolith Productions and Warner Bros. have teamed to produce a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online RolePlaying Game) called The Matrix Online. This game has actually been in production for quite some time now, but I write about it now because I am currently involved in the beta test for the program.

In The Matrix films, characters discover that the world they believed to be real is actually a computer-generated simulation designed to keep them under control in a state of sleep while their bodies are used as batteries for a race of artificially-intelligent machines.

The Matrix now actually exists as a virtual 3-dimensional world where players all across the world jack in via their home computers and interact via their avatars (computer player models).

Some observations: William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive, once suggested that as a species, humanity has always been on a path towards cyberneticization. From the first moment that a human created an artificial tool to perform some sort of task, we began our slow and steady evolution towards becoming cyborgs; towards the full amalgamation of the organic with the inorganic. If Gibson's hypothesis holds true, then the eventuality of The Matrix is (to borrow Agent Smith's phrase)...inevitable.

The Matrix Online certainly seems to be a step in that direction. Sure, right now, it's just a game. But what happens when someone perfects this technology so much, that we discover it actually creates an efficient platform to perform certain aspects of work. Is that not what the Internet represents today?

How are we not plugged into a Matrix right now? I check my e-mail several times a day. I look for information on the Internet at least once a day. How many businesses today conduct the majority of their business over the Net?

Jean Baudrillard suggests that we live in a world of simulation where the machines already control us in a manner of speaking. Technology lives in our everyday language of "programming" and "going off-line." Our television programs come to us through digital lines of transmission and computer-animated sequences. Our conceptions of the world are very much the result of our interaction with digital media (ie. the WTC attack looked like a movie, if my life were made into a movie, what celebrity would simulate me?, etc.).

How do the machines not live off of us right now?

Two things to note: CBC's Passionate Eye is showing the documentary O.com: Cybersex Addiction tonight at 9:00pm. Check it out for discussions on sex, technology, and hyper-reality.

Also, you can find out about The Matrix Online at www.thematrixonline.com