This year, sci-fi fans are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the release of The Matrix trilogy. By the way, did you know that the film was seen in the USA in March, and it reached us only in October 1999? A lot has been written and said on the topic of “Easter eggs” laid inside. It was interesting for me to compare what was shown in the film with what surrounds us every day, or, on the contrary, no longer surrounds us.
Wired telephones
Have you picked up a wired telephone for a long time? In The Matrix, these things appear with enviable regularity. Along with telephone booths. Of course, you can joke that earlier a communication cable ran to the phone, and now a 220-volt wire, but still, disk and push-button landline phones over the past 20 years went to the same place as faxes, and teletypes and points for long-distance calls. Remember, there were such people in the USSR?
CD
Oh yeah! It's time to feel old. The movie is full of scenes with CDs. When was the last time you saw these shiny things on store shelves? In fact, if you regularly move along federal highways, you can still find stalls along the roads with strategic stocks of 100% hit discs or Romantic collection. Greatest hits" and more. But in the cities it has become a real exotic. Deeper only VHS.
Huge CRT monitors
The age of "pot-bellied" computer monitors was short. In my opinion, in 5-7 years they were replaced by LCD monitors, and then the era of all kinds of “pills” and “plasmas” began. Now it’s generally a real “zoo” of shapes and sizes.
Nokia
Jokes, jokes, but it seemed that Nokia is forever. Alas, the triumph of the Finnish company was as enchanting as its "death". You can say as much as you like that the brand is “more alive than all the living”, but remember what Nokia was in your pocket in 1999-2002 and to what microscopic sizes the number of users of phones of this brand has decreased in our time.
"Yellow Pages"
When was the last time you picked up those thick paper collections of phone numbers with addresses? I think I saw them about ten years ago. And you?
With what has appeared during this time, everything is much simpler. Let's run through the most notable phenomena.
iPhone
Of course, the iPhone! The last decade and a half is the cult of Apple. I can certainly exaggerate, but it seems to me that there was no such reverence for "apple technology" during the "Matrix" period.
Facebook, YouTube, Instagram
You probably know that Facebook was not the first social network. It appeared a year later than MySpace, in 2004. But Mark Zuckerberg managed to turn his offspring into a global monster that entangled the whole world with its networks. You already know everything about YouTube and Instagram.
Uber
This is not just a taxi service. With its advent, the world has moved to a sharing business model. Towards an approach in which you can be the largest taxi service without actually having a fleet, providing services without having a haulier license. Uber has become the new Xerox, giving life to the total uberization of everything and everyone.
Tesla
If you look at all kinds of science fiction films, then electric cars appear there with enviable regularity. However, it was Elon Musk who managed to make them truly massive for ordinary people. Today, no one is particularly surprised by the appearance of Tesla or another electric car on the Moscow Ring Road. It has become commonplace, like snow, rain or other weather phenomena.
And now about what was in the "Matrix" and thank God, until it happened to us in reality. A short list of horror stories:
- The advent of artificial intelligence / "The Matrix"
- Apocalypse
- Using human energy to recharge cars
- Total hunger, deprivation and the decline of civilization
- Decline in human population
- The victory of technology over the future of mankind
I propose to discuss in the comments what other things and phenomena have disappeared from our daily lives over the past twenty years. By the way, if you are interested, I am ready to analyze the software with which the authors made the film itself and key special effects in subsequent articles. With technology advancing by leaps and bounds in two decades, it's all the more interesting to learn how the guys (now the Wachowski girls) managed to master key scenes.
Only registered users can participate in the survey. , you are welcome.
If Morpheus offered you, like Neo, the right to choose a colored pill. What color would she be?
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Red. This will lead to an escape from The Matrix to the real world, that is, to the "true reality", despite the fact that this is a more cruel, complex life.
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Blue. It will allow you to stay in the artificially created reality of the "Matrix", that is, to live in the "uncertainty of illusion."
54 users voted. 17 users abstained.
Source: habr.com