If twenty years ago, the "Matrix" trilogy was based on the original intention of Web 1.0 to imagine the future of virtual reality, presenting a desperate prospect of super artificial intelligence controlling human beings, and confusing the experience of virtual and reality also made "Red Pill" a classic; twenty years later, "Matrix Restart" obviously has no science fiction foresight, leaving only dog-tailed mink.
Web The world of WEB 3.0, hoping to regain the original intention of the Internet, people-oriented, completely decentralized, ordinary people can once again control the dominance of the virtual world, but the "Matrix" sequel is still a small fight between the old-fashioned rebel army and the omnipotent AI ruler, squandering an opportunity to use the restart to re-look forward to artificial intelligence, metaverse and the future of humanity, and even lack of reflection on the business model of the Web 2.0 era in the past two decades, such as the eyeball economy, surveillance capitalism, Addiction cannot be involved.
The wave of "Matrix Restart" is not alarming, which triggers three points of thinking.
Stills from The Matrix: Matrix Reboot.
First, don't dwell on the red pill and the blue pill, the reality has exceeded the imagination of the matrix series
Matrix Reboot is no longer enthusiastic, for the simple reason. Dystopian to continue to interpret the world of machine control has become obsolete, because the reality is already ahead of its time: the city is no longer the best hiding space for "rebels" like Neo or Memphis, and in the metropolis where cameras and face recognition are everywhere, there are more doors that allow rebels to jump in different spaces, and the pursuers are easy to find them, and the big data sky eye makes them nowhere to hide.
Further, as a work of the Internet 1.0 period, the imagined virtual space is still a mirror image of the physical space, and the savage growth of the city in the physical space is moved into the virtual world, so that the metropolis presented in the virtual world will have horns, shelters and shelters of three religions and nine streams, and the space for Memphis and Neo.
But the development of the Internet over the past two decades, the era of Web 2.0, has proven that this simple mirror image is illusory. The world of Internet 2.0 is private territory, where everyone's digital avatar exists on a platform created by a high-tech giant, and everyone is running naked in the virtual world. Giants provide the infrastructure of the private (rather than public) virtual world, and the biggest difference between this infrastructure and the infrastructure of cities in the real world is that they are constantly absorbing the digital exhaust released by each participant in the virtual world, and the massive amount of data is both the reason for the huge network effect of the platform and the source of the giant's money. The participants of the platform are the providers of real-time data, the users of the products and services that the algorithm screens and recommends, and of course the goods sold on the platform, the Trinity, beyond the imagination of the Matrix.
In this sense, in the past decade, the combination of virtual and real, the Internet of Everything, the Digital City, etc., is a process of virtual Internetization of metropolises from top to bottom, and in turn, it is also a process of making everything transparent and allowing the logic of algorithms to continuously penetrate into everyone's work and life.
Referring to the changes in the physical world and the logic of Internet 2.0, it is clear that the virtual world imagined by matrix is proved to have fatal logical errors. In a machine-designed "blue pill" world, surveillance and transparency are definitely put first, and any attempt to break through it from the inside is technically snuffed out in the cradle. In other words, the matrix cannot be restarted, and the matrix needs to be refactored.
In the era of WEB 3.0, the matrix restart could have opened a new brain hole
In the era of the Big Bang of the metaverse, it is a pity that the matrix restart did not collude with the current metaverse boom. Of course, films are always lagging behind, but leading films must be ahead of their time, which is why the Matrix series now seems to be the best metaphor for the real and virtual worlds twenty years ago.
The development of technology in the past two decades can introduce too many elements in the film world. For example, how does virtual currency appear in the matrix world? In addition to grabbing energy, will machines be interested in mining as well? Can we continue to extend that there will still be concepts of wealth and finance in the machine world? If so, how will it be presented?
The matrix world, to be used as a metaphor for games, is still very centralized, still a battle between centralized designers, managers, manipulators and individualistic hackers, but hackers, at least the kind of lone-walker hackers in the traditional sense, are no longer popular. The world of WEB 3.0 is an era in which every player in the game – whether he chooses to eat the Red Pill or the Blue Pill – wants greater dominance, rather than going with the flow.
Of course, what will happen to the world dominated by AI/algorithms if pushed to the extreme, and what new complex overlaps will occur, is also a topic worth exploring. In the past five years, it should be said that the era of AI/algorithms is booming, and various institutions are trying to grab more personal data, behavioral data, and e-commerce consumption data, in order to better provide consumers with more accurate recommendations, it is best to make them addicted and brush more time on the platform. Consumer attention becomes the product sold on the platform, a key focus for critics over the past few years. What new ripples will arise if such an algorithm-driven world is superimposed on a matrix? If there is still the possibility of free will in the matrix, will there be a new force challenging the matrix leader in the name of decentralization, who will compete for the influence of humans who have eaten the blue pill, but have no knowledge of the false truth, until one day the truth comes out...
Kissinger and former Google Chairman Schmidt in their new book "The Age of AI and Our Human Future" particularly emphasize that to understand the changes that AI brings to human beings, we cannot look at it from a single perspective, and simply letting technology go viral will bring a series of problems, because "unintended consequences" abound. The continuous progress of AI will certainly bring about a series of changes, for people, organizations and countries, all need to learn to dance with machines.
"Matrix Restart" could have better interpreted this "man-machine" dance.
Third, IP does not work on reboot: science fiction is reduced to nostalgic action movies
The world of the matrix is a world in which the body and the soul, the physical and the virtual, are completely separated, and the human body is imprisoned on the already disillusioned earth, becoming the source of energy seized by robots (AI). In the latest Matrix Reboot, it will even be found that the more active people's mental activity, the more tense the conflict is—rather than simply providing these people with a background for the living of the walking dead—the higher the energy generated.
This may be the only invention of matrix restart. Science fiction lacks foresight and foresight, and can only be reduced to nostalgic action movies. IP is not simply restarted, in a world that is already very familiar, can not arouse desire, just like a seven-year-old 007 and a half-old Xu Niang's bang girl on the screen to continue the frontier, except for a certain 007 actor's die-hard fans (if there are such fans), probably no one will pay.
Of course, the matrix reboot is also telling us that the heroic view of history is outdated, and there is a huge gap with the decentralized WEB 3.0 era. The narrative of zero-sum games is pediatric compared to the various deceptions in a complex world. Stepping out of the world of black and white, abandoning the dichotomy of red pills and blue pills, increasing the gray level of human nature, and even allowing machines to cultivate a certain gray level will be more fascinating.