known as Singularity and is expected to happen around 2030. Singularity will
be a phase in which humans will be surpassed by technology and was probably
inaugurated when Deep Blue, the computer chess simulator, beat Garry
Kasparov, the reigning chess world champion in 1997. In other words, what
Singularity is implying is the beginning of the post-human era.6
The fears that this new post-human era provokes in us have been
reflected in a variety of films in recent years that have reflected the control
acquired by machines over human destinies. These films have reflected this
from different perspectives: the assumption of decision and control of the
computer Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968); the technological
submission of humans to slavery in The Matrix; and the rebellion of
humanized robots in I, Robot (Proyas, 2004). Indeed, the feeling of creating
something that runs contrary to our aim of having a better and more pleasant
life is present in all of these films. However, the worst possible potential
consequence in the development of technology comes from computer
dependency in military systems and the delegation of decisions that impact
upon the lives of millions of individuals. In this sense, War Games (Badham,
1983) demonstrates how the extinction of the human race depends on a
multitude of 0s and 1s that are slowly slipping further from our control.
In The Matrix, as in The Terminator (Cameron, 1984), the extinction of
the human race is a real danger. In The Matrix, Artificial Intelligence creates
an alternative world in which machines have absolute control over everything
that happens. We can see in this film the culmination of the era of
simulations that Baudrillard describes: machines substitute reality for the
signs of the real, producing the perfect and total Hyperreality. The Matrix is,
in this sense, a computer programme able to simulate reality with all its
positive and negative components, a parallel unreality of bits. The
domination of machines over humans in The Matrix metaphorically represents
a current dilemma: developments in technology, and specifically in visual
media, mean that any image or sound can be accurately and easily
6 For further explication of Singularity see Kurzweil’s The Human Machine Merger: Are we Headed for
The Matrix? http://kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0552.html and Vinge’s: The
Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era
http://wwwcse.ucsd.edu/users/goguen/misc/singularity.html
- 25 -
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