On Machines, Transportation, and Control
Many people in my generation were introduced to pop philosophy through the words of the cloaked future warrior Morpheus, played with concise elegance by one Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix trilogy. Although some dismiss the movies for their shoddy treatment of philosophical and religious themes, I've always been a fan for the pure amount of adrenaline that the series creates as Morpheus guides the hacker turned hero Neo to claim his identity as 'the one.' The series pits humanity against a race of machines that desires nothing but control through a programmed dream world. Neo awakens from this dream to a nightmarish reality where humans "are no longer born, but grown" in vast fields of embryonic chambers. He is trained so that he can face the deadliest of these computer programs, called "agents" and then proceeds to lead us in a series of increasingly impressive action sequences where his skills are honed and we are generally reminded that the purpose ...