“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside and look around. . . What do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. . . The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do. . . These people are still part of that system. . . And that makes them our enemy. You have to understand. . . Most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured. . . So hopelessly dependent on the system. . . That they will fight to protect it.”
–Morpheus, The Matrix
As we begin to think about “the Knower” and the “ways of knowing”–specifically perception– I wanted to post some ideas from the land of 1’s and O’s that I found interesting and/or scary.
Follow the white rabbit, Neo:
First are two clips from the film Philosophy and the Matrix. The first relates to our study of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” Some of it is redundant to what we have already talked about, but there are some nuggets of wisdom in there:
The second deals with Kant’s ideas of “structures of the mind”
Am I the only person that finds this a little scary? The little bluetooth cellphone earpieces were already Matrix-y enough, but now you can view an augmented reality in realtime using your trusty iPhone. Here is a youtube clip in English that explains the app.
And lastly, this article, “Facebook Exodous,” by Virginia Heffernan for The New York Times was published last Sunday, which chronicles the recent trend of users who are quitting Facebook. An excerpt:
Leif Harmsen, once a Facebook user, now crusades against it. Having dismissed his mother’s snap judgment of the site (“Facebook is the devil”), Harmsen now passionately agrees. He says, not entirely in jest, that he considers it a repressive regime akin to North Korea, and sells T-shirts with the words “Shut Your Facebook.” What especially galls him is the commercialization and corporate regulation of personal and social life. As Facebook endeavors to be the Web’s headquarters — to compete with Google, in other words, and to make money from the information it gathers — it’s inevitable that some people would come to view it as Big Brother.
TOK Assignment: After investigating these ideas, as well as the movie The Matrix, post a well-articulated response in the comment box below that addresses one or many of these ideas concerning perception and augmented realities, and respond to one of your fellow student’s ideas. Want some other ideas to consider? Don’t feel like you need to limit your response to these, but just in case they help:
- What are the strengths and limitations of our senses in determining reality?
- How and to what degree do you create your own reality?
- How do new technologies influence our realities?
- How does belief influence our world?
As is always the case with comments on my website, please be sure to use your real first name.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
“I think therefore I am” – Rene Decartes
Try to disagree with that and you must asume that you exist to disagree…
So we know that our own consiousness exists, but in what form?
How can we KNOW our perceptions are accurate when it is possible they are not? I don’t think we can ever really know whether what we experiance is real or not. However we can assume that if you truly know that you exist in some form or another, meaning we have found an ultimate truth, then it is highly likely that there are other ultimate truths waiting to be discovered.
As such, I choose to consider things that can be clearly and consiously pecieved and have not yet been disproved to be true. I do not know that they are true, but I believe they are.
Man, why can’t we study The Matrix in TOK…?
Technology is an always growing force. No matter what, there is always going to something that will be updated, created, or invented. A few years ago at ISS, a man came here to promote their new program, Hyperwords. He had estimated by the time of 2010, the common household computer will have the same artifical intelligence as a mouse. He furthered on to say that by an estimated 2035, the common household computer will have the same intelligence as a person. How can a computer be smarter than a person? Make better calcuated desicions or more logical outcomes? Who knows, if anything, we are actually in the Matrix at this very moment. How is there any proof? An augmented reality is meant to replicate the enviorment that is (or in the Matrix case, “was”) around. Most of these realities are meant for entertainment purposes, as seen by the Tube App for the iPhone. What is reality? As Morpheus states, “Is reality just signals interpretted by your brain?” (something along those lines). How do we know we are in an augmented reality? Yesterday, you went on about Oracle and the giant buildings with mountains of people stuffed in the in Silicon Valley. Maybe this is the start of it all. Maybe we are evolving from a human lifesource to a lifesource for something to be greater than us…
Well, Callie, we get to teach TOK as a 2-year course here, so we have a little more time to explore our Ways of Knowing. The Matrix is proving to be a fun entry point for Perception.
To some degree don’t we all create our own ‘reality’ looking at people, events experiences etc. through a certain lens. In the matrix there was this one scene where neo is talking with the guy steering the ship. Well (i think) he said something along the lines of him not actually being able to see the ‘code’ of the matrix, the falling green symbols, but neo, supposedly being the chosen one could. (Since they later say he isnt the one i probably misheard that part but that’s irrelevant) So what i was thinking is that as the viewer, we too could see the green symbols so wouldn’t that make everyone in some or other way ‘the chosen one’. Or even the fact that everyone watching sees the same thing dilutes any ’specialness’ of being the one. After all there are countless people have sprouted some kind of significant achievement that we nowadays recognize. Anyway, i think i’m starting go round in circles now.
Society has been embracing new advances in the technology field since the Industrial Revolution I would say. Technology has a huge influence on our lives basically because of our desire to have those technologies. Big co-operations offer these technologies, we purchase them, and these big co-operations profit from us. This then allows them to make bigger advances in their field. I know one example and that is the supermarket chain Tesco. It originated as just a convenience store until it got involved with government. When it got involved with the government, this allowed Tesco the chance to branch out and become the most powerful supermarket chain in the United Kingdom, beating off any competitors and dealing with critics. (http://freetvonline.com/Frames.php?Categories_-_ID=8648&Videos_-_ID=38969&Frame=Off – this is a link to documentary about how too powerful Tesco is). So you that many people are living under a regime similar to the Matrix. You could also compare Communism to the Matrix too.
As Jordan said, we had a visitor come to our school who told us by 2035, the capability of a computer will be far beyond that of a human’s, but humans would still control technology. You could easily make a computer control a computer, that control another computer and make triple the capability of the countries government but someone will still have to push the button to activate the computers.
I also do agree with Jordan that an augmented reality or similar realities are made for entertainment value, like these links are novelties:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1WyyvNo1Sc&feature=fvw
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html
In the movie Morpheus says, “What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.” And then he holds up a battery. I think we have been living under a Matrix for Centuries but its not computer generated but it rather come in form of a government. Most of the world’s population lives under a control.
I believe we are evolving as a society and we taking along these technologies advances to break bigger mysteries like in the space program or something. If a Matrix would ever evolved or become to power, I still believe human intelligence still has the capability to destroy it.
haha … I just realised this was fake
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1WyyvNo1Sc&feature=fvw – I didn’t read the comment, but it still would be pretty cool if it were
was my response too long that its not showing :S
I think the matrix was cool even though I wasn’t watching it in TOK. I am totally spell checking this because you’re an english teacher and it’s good to establish a good reputation. I think the scene with the glasses is cool but no one should promote drugs only medical ones. Any way in my opinion it is very difficult to tell if we are living in some what of a matrix…. if it was true we’d totally be on a mac because they run better than windows….anyway i get off subject very easily…I think it is very important for human beings to look out of ‘the box’ and think about the future, technological advances, where well be when were 80’s and not focus on things happening around us. I think it is nice to sometimes stop and remember we are all human beings and really there is no meaning to our life. I have thought about this repeatedly and i have concluded that humans strive to be happy, have a good job or relationship….so on, however unfortunately it’s a dod-eat-dog world and humans usually find happiness by putting others down in competition or looking bigger and better than they really, we prefer to live in a fake but perfect world like the matrix rather than handling the truth, there is nothing stopping humans from turning back into savages but it is the idea that you’ll be on a lower social status that prevents us from doing so……………I hope this was useful and sparked thoughts……..cool sight.
*I mean’t to say DOG-eat-dog, not dod*
what is reality, what is it truly? if one really wants to explain what it is, the only way is to put it as simple, as basic as Morpheus said; it is only electrical impulses to brain. In that case can we not replicate those senses using a “machine”? in fact we can and it has been tested before. but then how do we really know that what we see, feel, taste, smell and/or hear is true if a machine is able to replicate those senses just by sending impulses to brain. so how are we to know if what we are living at this very moment real, or if its just a dream of sorts. Morpheus also stats my favorite quote ever in a movie; “Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? “. those are some very powerful lines and are very true, how would we know. but then again to answer this question we need to understand humans, there is another very intriguing quote by Agent Smith; “I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure. “. we can clearly stat that that is true, even if to just some extent, it still is true, so how can we even begin to try to understand the world around us and the space surrounding us if we dont, cant even explane what we as humans really are? ……. HOW ???
Ah, I see. It would be nice to have TOK for two years, but I’m not sure how that would work at Mira Loma, the way our schedules are set up. The Matrix definitely sounds a lot more fun than the material we’re studying, we’re just going through a packet on Wilson’s site.
Our mind is such a complex thing. Do we really believe that it could be taken over and controlled by machines? The machines we created in the first place to satisfy our needs! Yes electrical impulses can be replicated by a machine, but not to such an extent. Not to go so far as saying that what we feel, see, experience and believe in our daily lives is controlled by machines. The everyday machines I know do not feel. they do not love, they cannot dream. They do not hurt when we throw them in the trash when we are finished with them. They do not sit on our desks and dream of world domination.
Of course the idea of how influential they have become, how important they are in our daily lives, how dependant we are on them is scary. Just trying to imagine our modern day society without them is crazy. Technological growth is stimulated by demand. as our civilization progresses so does the demand for more advanced technology. the technology of today is very advanced. This is such an important part of our lives. I would not say we are controlled by our machines, but certainly we are influenced by them. We organize our lives around them and that in a way gives them a great amount of power. They exist because we want them to though, not because they live lives of their own.
Aside from that I must say that I like the idea that our world is only what we can see. Only what we know and we experience in our daily lives do we live, However there is so much more out there. There is so much we can’t even start to imagine. To experience the real world and all that is out there we need to break free of the ties to our world now. We need to understand that there is more out there. We grow up knowing only what we live and if we break through those ties of the mind, so much is possible, I wouldn’t know where to start.
I think this is something important I learned from the Matrix. Not specifically, what is this world we live in? are we really living or do we just believe we are? I learned the lesson of not just seeing what is in front of you but looking around and realizing it’s not just you, but you are part of a greater whole.
Anyway I think that if our world was controlled and we were just living in a computer program I would probably not want to know. if life in my mind is pleasant enough, that’s good enough for me
Our perception is subject to what we believe to be real. And what we believe to be real depends on what we believe. We believe that we are real and that everything we experience . There is no limit to what to what everyone individual person believes to be reality.
we can create are own realities in order to escape some aspect of our real lives that we wish to get away from. Little children create their own worlds and imaginary friends. but after the age of around 10, it is seen as disturbing to have an imaginary friend. Why is this?
With all this new technology being produced. It makes society wonder what is next to come. At this present time we rely heavily on technology. If it were simply to vanish, there is a chance that it would impact us all.
Belief drives us to live. Whether we are driven for some event later in life, we are all driven by own belief of what we want ourselves to achieve.
And now I’ve just confused myself . . . :S
I am impressed with the interesting ideas students have submitted so far to this post. I have some pictures for Jordan and the class where we can look at Oracle and other large “human battery machines” in Silicon Valley. Maybe we should also look at a clip from Mike Judge’s Office Space, which Joshua Clover compares to the Matrix in his book about the film (we have a couple pages photocopied to use in class tomorrow).
Abdul’s reply and Bart’s comment that “To some degree . . . we all create our own ‘reality’ looking at people, events experiences etc. through a certain lens” reminds me of that Alan Lightman essay that we read, basically about a man noticing a woman in a park–I have some more of Einstein’s Dreams for us to explore as well. I also like the idea of the Matrix as Control, which Declan highlights nicely. Ria expands on this by questioning how much control is already in place by the technologies that we rely on. This reminds me of when I bought my first cellphone in the US, and I sent out my number to all of my friends in an email titled “My name is Neo.” In it, I stated, “I’ve decided to symbolically ‘take the red pill’ and become part of the Matrix, otherwise known as cellular technology. . . ”
Linda successfully confused herself (always a good thing in my book–maybe this should be part of the class description) by looking at the idea of beliefs and faith. This also seems like so much a part of what the Matrix is doing. Even the names suggest a religion. Trinity, Neo, the Oracle.
Other ideas? What about Facebook? Twitter? Being “online” all the time? Multitasking? Is it possible to get “offline” now? What are other ways that we can create our own realities?
“The Matrix” is a film which is deeply rooted in the philosophies of pragmatism and pragmaticism both of which are theories regarding supposed realities, and questions what defines meaning and truth. It is important to notice that human perception is an integral theme in “The Matrix” and especially the flexibility with which it is portrayed. To think that every sense is controlled by an electrical impulse is an absurd thought and challenges the conventional reality. However, it serves as an epistemological extension of the film’s philosophical spectrum into fallibilistic theory.
The more you know, the more you realize that you know nothing. ~Socrates
Reality is extremely loosely defined. For some it is associated with tangibility. For others, the pragmatic theory of truth holds true, positing that the knowledge of something alone indicates its existence. And of course there are many people who believe abstract concepts such as emotions, or states of being can be considered part of our perceived reality. “The Matrix” strays deeper yet into the realm of metaphysics and ontology as it explores the differing interpretations of what reality truly is and then how humans can perceive that reality.
The distortion of reality, meaning, and truth is all due to the lens of morality and beliefs through which we perceive. And hand in hand with fallibilism, the film subtly introduces an agnostic viewpoint, with a conjecture that draws the metaphysical claim that concepts ranging from theology to all reality are ultimately impossible to know as it cannot be appropriately proved or disproved. This applies specifically to the Matrix which we can assume contains religiously rooted ideologies on theories such as Genesis. However, we see this was disproven as that entire universe was simply the product of human creation, and therefore the same can apply to the ‘real world’.
All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely. ~H. L. Mencken
Reality is a concept which is impossible to define because it is entirely dependent on how we define our own realities. Furthermore, we can never be certain what we perceive can be held true as even interacting with a theory in all five senses may not be enough to assert that it in fact exists. Reality is entirely subjective. And according to some philosophical theories such as Solipsism, there may not exist reality outside your own mind whatsoever. And in fact, the only concept we directly interact with is our minds, and everything else can logically be a subset of that construct. So there will always be various ideas or thoughts on how to define reality, but it in truth, it is far more reliant on individual perception.
Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion. ~Democritus
There are no facts, only interpretations. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
I must agree with the rest, reality is different for every person, because each person perceives things differently from others. Therefore every human being creates his own reality. For example, a person born in a room with no windows or doors would have a different understanding of reality than a normal person. For a person born in that room, the reality would be that room, unless someone else told him it wasn’t the reality. Matrix is exactly the same. People are born in the matrix (which is the room) and they think it is the reality, but in reality, he has not seen the real world. He has seen what his senses were interpreting as reality. So, our senses are able to make sense of the surroundings, but are unable to determine whether it is real or not. I think we might be able to understand what the reality is some time, sooner or later.
As I already said, we each create our own reality. Our reality depends on how we interpreted things we experienced. I guess, the reality is very similar for everyone, but there is a tiny bit of variation where our interpretation of reality kicks in.
Now, machines are created by people, people put their knowledge into these machines, therefore machines are (probably) never going to be smarter than us. They can be as smart as the people created them are. I support Declan, we can destroy what we create. I do not think that a creation can destroy a creator.
Belief, in my opinion, is a factor that influences our world a lot. Different people choose what they believe in, thus, this difference affects each persons’ world. Same as the guys in the video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhpoyHV0U4s&feature=related ), they believe in Jedi religion, but many other people don’t. This makes their world different from everyone else’s.
The uncertainty with the way we perceive the world can lead us to countless amounts of questions, such as “Are we really what we are?” or “Do we really exist?” and so on.
Everyone percieves reality in a different way. For example, people with synesthesia experience the world in a very different way from others. Their senses could tell them the musical note “A” is red, or someone’s laughter is purple. If our senses are what tell us what the world is like, we have no way of knowing if what we see is what others see. One person could look at a colour and call it “green”, and another person would agree with him. But that other person could be seeing a completely different colour, and still know it as “green”. If reality is merely electrical impulses to the brain, that could mean that while we are all existing in the same reality, it is possbile we all view it in a different way.
As Ria said, “The everyday machines I know do not feel. they do not love, they cannot dream.” One day, however, they might. Technology is advancing at such a rapid rate, that perhaps eventually machines will be created that can feel emotion. Many movies and books have been created on the subject of robots becoming too intelligent and rebelling against humans, but there have been far fewer movies and books created showing robots in a positive light. Even at this very moment, humans are creating robots that are capable of extraordinary things. Robots can now take care of people who need help, create microscopic technology that human hands cannot replicate, and perform delicate life-surgery on humans.
New technologies greatly influence reality and how we see it. New technologies have changed the world and keep on doing it right at this moment. The easiest example to find is the internet, hasn’t it changed all our lives. We now see reality differently than before because we have the possibility to investigate thousands of different sources. Our reality has changed in a way we couldn’t have imagined before. Before we were only open to one information and point of view but now that we have the internet everybody can see what other countries’ mentality is like what happens around the world which makes them able to properly judge things which before would have only been assumptions.
As Jordan said in his comment, new technologies keep on coming out and changing the world. They are more powerful than ever before. When the owner of hyper words come to visit at ISS most of us were left wondering if what he said was actually going to happen. A normal computer just as powerful as the human mind that created it? “That can’t be possible” is what most of us thought. Everyday there’s a new computer coming out which is more powerful than it’s predecessor and I believe that one day there will be a computer which is more powerful than a human.
Technology is advancing at such a rapid rate, that society almost doesn’t have enough time to think about it and ponder on what it really is. Ever since the beginning of technology, human beings have strived for more, never being satisfied with what they have….that’s why the human mind is so complex. One minute you may have an idea that you 100% back up, and the next you may go completely against this, the mind just changes and changes, its a never ending line of thoughts, beliefs, etc. Just like technology, it never stops updating and changing, which our mind sort of does. So “how does technology influence our realities?” I think the fact that technology is continuously updating and becoming better and bigger, we as humans see this going on, and it leads us to assume that we can do the same. It results in us believing that there’s always better than the best, and that it will continue to get better infinitely. Which in a way is ironic to me because infact were the ones creating this technology and updating it, and making our enormous co-operations, so if you think about it, were actually influencing technology
Mr Quale, you teach TOK now? Awesome. Constantly last year I was thinking… “Wouldn’t it have been great if Mr Quale was our TOK teacher?” And everyone around me agreed whenever I said it.
Thanks Danny, that’s nice to hear. I’m enjoying it, and glad that I finally got an opportunity to teach it. We started with perception, which seems almost impossible to not make interesting. Of course the Matrix helps.