[njamilla]

For all that the Matrix posits about human intelligence and the desire for individualism and personal autonomy, why shouldn't humans be the computer's source for energy in the same way that cows, pigs, and chickens are sources of energy for us?

Heck, the only thing that prevents us from continuing the slaughter is the fact that animals are too dumb to start their own revolution against us humans. Are humans so smart and special that they shouldn't be at the bottom of the food chain?

[Madam Corvax]

Funny you should mention this, njamilla. I have thought about it and from what little I recall from the film, the "rationale" behind humans being a food for machines is that we produce electricity by means of chemical processes in our body to the amount of one flat battery big enought to power a torch.

Well, it is an awful lot of trouble to produce humans to get solittle enegry- you need to maintain the elaborate machinery that keeps them alive, and still you need energy - chemical energy in the form of food to keep humans alive. This chemical energy in food is obtained from edible animals and plants, and the ultimate source of energy is SUN, because that's how plants produce glucose and other sugars.

Well to go throught that chain including humans is an awful lot of bother. It would not work without sun anyway, unless someone would be able to synthesse proteins from elements, but again it is an awful lot of bother. Much easier just to built one power plant with a couple of old-fashioned power turbines. Much more efficient than humans.

Of course, we humans can be simply eaten - but then the machines would have to have an in-built system similar to animals to get energy from burning sugars - but that would MAKE them animals, not machines, I think, and would be nowhere nese so spectacular.

[Despondent]

Are humans so smart and special that they shouldn't be at the bottom of the food chain?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'll accept that it's a Circle of life, with no top or bottom for now. Less guilt.

[SimeSublime]

I thought the humans were fed on dead humans. This couldn't work well though, as it wouldn't hold up over time.

[njamilla]

Madam Corvax: So basically you're saying that the AI should have just made a solar collecter. Brilliant!

But, yeah, I guess that is a pretty boring story. Unless! It was the fault of human pollution which prevented the AI from effectively tapping the sun's energy.

OMG, we could do the same thing now. But, that would destroy the need for the fossil fuel energy, wouldn't it.

But, wasn't the whole point of the AI's rise its own self-awareness and its sudden discovery of its own enslavement to biological creatures.

I can't win this argument, can I?

[Madam Corvax]

But, yeah, I guess that is a pretty boring story. Unless! It was the fault of human pollution which prevented the AI from effectively tapping the sun's energy.

OMG, we could do the same thing now. But, that would destroy the need for the fossil fuel energy, wouldn't it.

I can't win this argument, can I?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I really can't remember, but I think there was something about sun being blocked, hence the need to use humans as a source of energy. That is why I did not mention sun cells - they would be useless, but the fossil fuelled power plants would work - all they need is fuel and some water.

In reality, people do not utilise the sun energy for producing electricity because the solar cells are not effective enough, and it costs more to maintain and operate such plant than the electricity produced is worth. There was such plant in California, and they closed it down. So far, nothng can surpass the eighteen-cetury concept of a steam turbine. We may have mobile phones and laptops, but the way we produce mass-consumption energy is pretty old.

[Slade]

Yeah, the humans destroyed the entire planet in an attempt to wipe out the machines. AI be damned, they had to be wiped out. The explosions and such blocked out the sun, which the humans hoped would kill the machines, which ran on solar power at the time. But then somehow or other the machines managed to capture thousands of humans, build and maintain the machinery neccesary to power them, and their nearly flawless virtual world, and then use the humans as a chemical energy source.

Yeah, you kinda gotta take sci-fi with a grain of salt. It would have been easier and more effecient for the machines to just not bother with the Matrix at all. Hey, how did the machines get all of the nutrients neccesary so support the humans in their stasis tanks? Digesting other humans wouldn't be enough, or we wouldn't need to eat... So why did they do it? No other purpose to live. One of them realized that without humans to take care of/fight, there would be no point to them existing.

Edit: Forgot the rest of my opinion.

I don't feel bad for the machines. I think being locked in a bunch of tanks and forced to live off of machines and only destroy a perfectly fine imaginary world is much better than annihiliating an irreplaceable real world. Hmm... more ideas have popped into my head. I need to get writing again.

This post has been edited by Slade: 25 November 2004 - 10:04 PM

[njamilla]

Forgot the rest of my opinion.

I think I said that when I was watching the third Matrix.