Here’s Your Lease, Mister Anderson
This goes to show how slippery pop culture memories can be, because I never would have guessed if asked by a random stranger I was robbing at knife point at the time that “The Matrix” came out before Y2K. Hell, even Y2K happened before Y2K. Actually, Y2K never happened at all, but a lot of us techies got paid lots of overtime hours because of it, so Y2K remains a fond recollection for me, particularly when I’m paying my alimony and looking through butcher shop windows at tasty treats that I’ll never ever get to enjoy again.
The bigger shock for me is that, twelve years after “The Matrix” premiered, our society isn’t further down the road to achieving the movie’s primary premise. I think it’s pretty self-evident in 2011 that there are more than enough people willing to sell out their physical selves in order to stay in an ego-stroking virtual hallucination 24/7 that you could start leasing Matrix Condo Pods tomorrow, and in less than ninety days you would have more money than God, or Scrooge McDuck, or Richie Rich although I’m assuming that his parents were holding most of his fortune in trust, and that he didn’t actually own anything except for the deformed dog covered in dollar signs, and maybe the robot maid with a heart of gold and soft polyvinyl hands.
My point is that people are currently letting themselves turn into massive piles of gelatinous protoplasm just for WoW and Call of Duty… and, when BioWare finally releases the new Star Wars MMORPG, the market capitalizations of Apple and Google combined will be utterly dwarfed by the company that makes the best intravenous pizza pockets.
Just imagine how many of these alienated, socially disenfranchised people would be willing to completely and permanently unplug from reality and enter a custom virtual world in exchange for their latent body heat and spare nervous system voltage… and maybe a start-up fee. Okay, the first 15 days would be free, but you don’t get access to the Supermodel Realms until you let them put the spike into your cranial data port (free installation for a limited time!).
It’s scary, man. The person(s) who manage to throw together the first truly immersive virtual bliss (holodeck quality or better) and who can resist the lure of their own product will rule this planet. Reality can’t compete with custom dreams. Of course, a certain number of people would be tempted to stay outside of the matrix and make a ton of dough working in construction, programming, and writing scenarios based on extensive psychological profiles and elaborately detailed personal interviews with customers… not that I know anything about that kind of work.
Because I don’t.
Oh my goodness, would you look at those oil prices!
A.J. Axline
Binary Nation
