Long Blog Post
Hidden within some of the most iconic sci-fi movies are the struggles that the previous generation went through to make the present what it is today. The Matrix and Tron are films that had new concepts at the time. The creators of these films left multiple hidden messages about the 'truth' behind many of the technologies and freedoms we take for granted today.
With Tron, on the surface we see a movie about a man named Flynn hacking into his old workplace to get proof his work was stolen. Doing so, he ends up breaking in and getting sucked into the artificial intelligence program that runs the company and fights for his life to get out. Beneath the romanticism of the movie we see one of the more apparent issues: copyright.
The company that Flynn works for, can be viewed as a symbol for ATARI. This can be assumed because of the videogames that were released, similar to Pac-Man and Space Invaders, which marked the rise to power of the corporation. During the rise, boom, and crash of video games ATARI was at the center of it all. They were the videogame company before Nintendo and other companies rose to power. However, much like Flynn's case, some of their programmers weren't credited for the work they did and had their work stolen. Tron speaks about the issue of copyright and how this played a part in shaping society back when the Internet and the World Wide Web were coming out.
The Matrix is a film that discusses the World Wide Web and the issue of closed systems, along with the World Wide Web and the Internet. The main character of the film, Neo, is a hacker who is trying to figure out what the Matrix is while also maintaining his ordinary life as a programmer for a software company. Upon finding out that the Matrix is actually an AI that has created the virtual world in which all humans live in, he joins up with like minded individuals to attempt to free humanity.
The Matrix is a world with constraints that controls the lives of the people that inhabit it. It dictates what can be done in the world and what cannot. People like Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity want to remove the control that the Matrix has on people and allow them to be 'free'. This means that they want to remove people from the Matrix so that they can embrace true freedom by realizing the truth of the real world and living their lives accordingly. Just like the issue with closed systems, networks like AOL controlled what content people could access on the World Wide Web. No one could add or create content on the system, leaving them powerless and without a voice. This is completely different to the culture we have today where individuals can make their own blogs and websites, uploading and downloading software freely.
There is an important scene in The Matrix where Neo is able to learn anything in an instant by downloading it directly into his mind. At one point he is amazed at how easily and efficiently he is able to learn martial arts. This is a crucial point in the movie because it speaks about the rights of individuals to freely upload and download content on the World Wide Web. While closed networks controlled the Internet and made an attempt to control the World Wide Web, when it first came out no one knew how big of a platform the WWW would evolve into. Corporations wanted to limit and monetize the Web and place constraints that would prevent what modern day man can do easily, such as post an article or download a video. The Matrix, while an entertaining sci-fi film against a corrupt AI, is actually a movie about man's fight for freedom on the Web and using the Internet.
These films are a legacy of the previous generation that put their struggles in an interesting format to get across. They are testaments of what people had to go through in order to make modern day society what it is today. With the current rise of virtual reality coming into play with games, as well as the Web and apps being a huge part of daily life, we have to realize that the past and the present aren't so different. We have the early pioneers to thank for our technology and the rights that they fought for.
