The Matrix, reality and simulation

It's 25 years of Keanu Reeves starrer The Matrix, where Neo, the protagonist, lives in the year 2199 and, more significantly, in a simulated world that is a fake-out version of the late 20th century, created by 21st-century artificial intelligence (AI) to enslave humanity.

- ATANU BISWAS

It's 25 years of Keanu Reeves starrer The Matrix, where Neo, the protagonist, lives in the year 2199 and, more significantly, in a simulated world that is a fake-out version of the late 20th century, created by 21st-century artificial intelligence (AI) to enslave humanity. The film popularised the notion that we are all actually lying in fluid pods, acting as feedstock for machines, and that reality is an illusion. The concept is as old as Plato's Republic and as modern as Elon Musk's Twitter feed.

For many years, sci-fi has emphasised topics like computer gaming, virtual reality, and AI. For instance, Daniel F. Galouye's novel Simulacron-3 (1964) describes a virtual city created as a computer simulation for market research, where the simulated inhabitants possess consciousness, with all but one unaware of the true nature of their surroundings.