"Matrix" movie

[Rakesh Bhandari]

Never seen the miscegenation taboo so hard at work though. The one heroic
woman   in and out of the matrix  lives with a couple of rather good
looking black men on some desolate spaceship. Always elegant in tight
leather, she has to wait for Keanu to fall in love and experience her first
deep kiss. None of the black men had expressed sexual interest in her and
she not in them. Which makes her especially pure, I guess.   Fishburne has
to sacrifice his life to keep the genuis-savior Keanu, often referred to as
The One,  alive so she can finally fall in love and humanity keep its
chance for freedom through exit from the matrix. And then there's the old
black woman Prophet who not only gives the movie a creepy supernatural side
but also reinvents the Aunt Jememiah role for cyberspace--she gets to
predict Fishburne taking a fall for Keanu and leather lady falling in love
with The One too.  At times, the movie also seemed to be strewn will
allusions to the video games that pock faced teenage boys play; cyber
warrior gets leather chick at the end and all that.  There's a real dearth
of Asians in the future too, and that gets on my nerves.

All this said, the movie was fascinating to think through as we begin to
anticipate and guide the massive changes in human life, including of course
virtual reality, that are coming and will come from the electronic storage
and transmission of information. In his latest book, Maynard Smith attempts
to understand evolution in terms of great transitions in the way
information has been stored and transmitted: the appearance of the first
replicating molecules--the origin of life itself, the origin of cells;
reproduction by sexual means; the appearance of multicellular plants and
animals; the emergence of cooperation and of animal societies; and the
unique language ability of humans. There the biological analysis
culminates, but Maynard Smith suggests that the electronic storage and
transmission of information may prove to be another great transition. So
movies on the topic are quite interesting especially for us cyber geeks.

yours, rakesh