A few weeks ago, I had to watch The Matrix for my Contemporary American Film class. This is the same class that watched Blade Runner, Silence of the Lambs, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Coolness of this class aside, I want to ask a question pertaining to the Matrix, give my answer, and see what sort of discussions will arise in the comments.
What do the machines in The Matrix do when they are not hunting humans?
After much thought, I asked myself "Then what do humans do?" My answer to the human question was "We built a society around that which we value. We valued shelter from the weather, so we built houses. Sturdier than huts made of straw now, but that's what happened. We wanted readily-available food, so we built a system around that. Now we go to the grocery store when we want food. Or we eat at a restaurant. Then we started to crave entertainment, and thus we have what our current pop culture and society seems to be built around.
My answer to my question is this. The Machines built their society upon which they value, like what humans did. So if the majority of their society goes into maintaining human farms and hunting the human rebels, then I guess that's their society. If anyone has seen hints regarding other jobs of The Machines, besides keeping the Matrix running and the aforementioned positions, please comment in the comments below.
I like to think of the Matrix machines as being similar to the machine planet featured in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. As the story goes, Voyager fell through a black hole and ended up at a machine planet. The incredibly advanced machines interpreted it's programming "to learn everything it could" and sought to help it so they bestowed upon Voyager all the knowledge that they had amassed, changing it forever into this huge, incredible thing. Maybe that's what the Matrix machines were trying to do.
ReplyDeleteWhen the machines have downtime from maintaining the Matrix they probably watch what those wacky humans are doing--the ultimate reality TV!
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