At the very end of the 20th century the Wachowskis brought us The Matrix, still firmly in my top 3 of best films ever, after almost 3 decades. One of the scenes in it is particularly relevant today, when we consider the iron grip that Big Tech has on the world.
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At the very end of the 20th century the Wachowskis brought us The Matrix, still firmly in my top 3 of best films ever, after almost 3 decades.
When I saw the first teasers on TV in late 1999, I shrugged it off as yet another sci-fi flick, a genre that never did much for me. Sure the special effects looked impressive, but that's not enough to make a film a good film.
Take Jurassic Park, for example. Or Avatar. Both featured fantastic special effects for their time, but both films were... well... disappointing.
But The Matrix was different. Besides spectacularly good special effects, it also tells a compelling story with a lot of philosophical depth. It's one of those rare films that you can watch many times and still discover new layers and connections every time.
One of the scenes in it is particularly relevant today, when we consider the iron grip that Big Tech has on the world. Some people are waking up, slowly, and realize they're being controlled by Big Tech, and need to break those chains.
But "millions of people, just living out their lives, oblivious", don't see it (yet), or even oppose a migration to the free world of Open Source and autonomy.
I've been trying to wake people up for decades, showing them "a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible", but most people resist.
The Wachowskis brought us this scene in which Morpheus explains exactly this situation to Neo, when he shows him what The Matrix is:
The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you 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 a 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.
https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=IDOTbh1P0R0It's chillingly relevant in these days of enshittification and the rise of AI, and at the same time paints a picture of successfully standing up against a system of gross manipulation, abuse and oppression.
Let us deal out red pills everywhere, and liberate more and more people. Show them a world where social media are actually social, where private communication is in fact private and where you are in control of your own life.
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