When was the greatest rise of human civilization? According to Agent Smith, the villain of the computer program in the movie “The Matrix”, it was 1999. In the iconic first installment of the sci-fi franchise, humans are enslaved by artificial intelligence, and what they believe to be the real world is actually a simulation. According to Agent Smith, virtual reality, known as the Matrix, was created right at the end of the 20th century, because after that, everything goes downhill for our species.
In retrospect, it must be admitted that Smith was somewhat correct. The economy was booming then, 11/XNUMX still hadn't happened, and the pandemic was a distant memory of years gone by.
That year 1999 was also significant for the film industry - we got films like "Fight Club", "Office Space", "Being John Malkovich" and of course "The Matrix", which made us question our world, reality and existence itself.
"The Matrix" was so convincing that it convinced some fans that its plot really takes place in reality.
In this year's documentary "A Glitch in the Matrix" by the director Rodney Asher, a large number of people confirm that they truly believe that we all live in the Matrix.
The film of the Wachowski sisters was undoubtedly part of cyberpunk, a subgenre of science fiction with futuristic technology combined with a dark dystopian world.
The fourth film, whose premiere is scheduled for December 22, will bring back three beloved characters who died in the previous parts, namely Neo, Trinity and Morpheus.
Although the plot is still not entirely clear, the central story is closer to us today than ever before. In a world where truth is stranger than science fiction - what can the new "Matrix" movie offer us?
The beginning of cyberpunk
This term was coined in 1983 when an American author Bruce Betke wrote "Cyberpunk", a short story in which a group of rebellious kids live in a technologically advanced society. Another author important to early cyberpunk is Philip K. Dick, but only after his "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" was adapted for the cinema screen in 1982, under the name "Blade Runner". This film has become one of the most significant in the world of cyberpunk. The list includes the Japanese manga series "Akira" and the anime of the same name, as well as the novel "Neuromancer" and the role-playing board game "Cyberpunk 2000".
What is characteristic of cyberpunk is the big difference between the rich and the poor, as well as the high crime rate, narcotics, corrupt government, air pollution, climate disasters... In short: Advanced technology and bad life.
Another thing was characteristic of this direction - rebels like Neo.
"I think one of the key elements of the sentence is: 'the street finds its own way to use things,'" explains one of the cyberpunk authors. Neil Stevenson.
"When electricity became available to everyone, a lot of things started to run on electricity. Engineers began to naturally think in the direction of creating washing machines, toasters, and eventually cars. But I don't think any of them thought of an electric guitar then. Even if they did, they couldn't have guessed how powerful the movement would be in modern music," Stephenson points out for the BBC.
"If you had written something like that in a novel published in 1920, readers would have seen it as something bizarre. But that's what happened. So for me, electric guitars are a classic cyberpunk phenomenon", believes the author of the "Snow Crash" novel.
Cyberpunk is booming today, which is partly proven by the video game "Cyberpunk 2077", in which players occupy an abandoned city 50 years in the future, which has been the best-seller in recent years, and in just one month since it went on sale, more than ten million.
One of her characters, Johnny Silverhand, played by "The Matrix" star Keanu Reeves, inspired the non-profit organization Limbitless to print 3D versions of his artificial hand for all the people who have actually had it amputated.
Meanwhile, the cyberpunk series “Blade Runner: Black Lotus”, “Cowboy Bebop”, “Altered Carbon”, “Omniscient” and “Ad Vitam” have achieved great success. Even in music, the influence of cyberpunk is recognizable, and examples are videos in which holograms and flying cars appear.
But what is it that drives cyberpunk? Maybe it's that our environment has become too similar to all those depictions we've seen or read. In fact, we live in an era that many cyberpunk creators saw as the distant future.
"Blade Runner" and "Akira" are set in 2019, "Cyberpunk 2020" in 2020, "Johnny Mnemonic" in 2021... We still don't have flying cars and cyborgs in our society, but cyberpunk as an idea is stronger than ever.
A concept that conquered the world
William Gibson used the name cyberpunk in "Burning Chrome", before popularizing it in the novel "Neuromancer", a cult hit in which hacker Henry embarks on a mission into a virtual reality called the Matrix.
"A conscious hallucination that billions of people indulge in every day," are the words Gibson uses to describe something that can be used for the Internet today.
He also popularized the name megacorporations, alluding to conglomerates with monopolistic powers with the help of which they run governments.
Some would say that megacorporations are a reality today, because they are run by people more powerful than the president.
Stevenson points out that we still don't have villains behind big companies, but that "we've kind of gotten to the point where as a society we look at billionaires as people who solve problems."
Virtual reality, seen in "The Matrix," "Neuromancer" and others, has become especially popular during the pandemic, allowing people to attend concerts, festivals, training sessions, Black Lives Matter protests, and even practice surgery, without leaving their homes.
All this is made possible thanks to "augmented reality" (extended reality) in the form of glasses and contact lenses.
There are also cryptocurrencies, which is Neil Stevenson predicted in the novel "Cryptonomicon" from 1999.
John Henke, former director of a division of Google, who created Google Earth, inspired by the fictional software from "Snow Crash" that allows characters to see the planet with the help of a replica.
Another fan of "Snow Crash" is the co-founder of Google, Sergei Brin, who recently revealed in an interview that he started making a list of people who created something inspired by that book, but "at some point he stopped, because the list became too long."
Although the metaverse that is the center of the plot of the mentioned book does not yet exist, in recent months we have been very close to it, after Facebook announced that it could create one.
"Presence on the Internet, not just viewing," he described Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, who even renamed the company Meta.
"You will be able to do everything you can imagine: meet family and friends, go to work, study, play, shop," he added.
"I have nothing to do with Facebook creating a metaverse," Stevenson defended himself in October, but that is not entirely true, because he is an employee of Facebook, Dean Iklis revealed that Zuckerberg made all managers at the company read "Snow Crash".
As in the work of Stevenson, in Zuckerberg's metaverse there will be avatars that will represent people, and they will be controlled with the help of glasses, but also phones and computers.
Are cyberpunk fans wrong?
All those who admire the metaverse may need to understand that the dystopia depicted in “Snow Crash” is not an imprint of a better world.
"The book is somehow dystopian and cautionary. Trying to implement everything from it might not send a good message," Stevens says, but he doesn't dare dismiss the metaverse in reality.
"The metaverse itself, as described in the book, really doesn't go in one direction or the other. It is a neutral communication used by many people in different ways. Some are bad, but ordinary people just want to keep communicating with each other, the way Zoom does it today. Some people might use Zoom to plan a bank robbery, but others use it for charity or creativity," he points out.
However, those who support the metaverse may be missing the point, and William Gibson reveals that he censored himself, so he did not add some ideas to the book, because he did not want anyone to copy them in reality.
"Cyberpunk is a warning, not an inspiration," he says Mike Pindsmith, designer of the game “Cyberpunk 2077”.
This quote also appeared in CYBR magazine in 2018, which is dedicated to futuristic technology.
Translated and edited
Mirela Zogović
Bonus video:
