Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
6. Digital Nature
In the last chapter it was suggested that
The Matrix
's most brilliant
conceit is to make the technology by which its paranoid vision is
sustained invisible. By making the world a computer simulation
the Wachowski Brothers have understood that the machinery that
characterizes and dominates late modernity cannot be adequately
represented in physical terms. This is not simply because computers
are not exciting to look at, or because they do not evince the same
dynamism as machines of previous eras. It is because computers
themselves are not the machinery in question. They are merely
points at which the vast, complex and largely invisible assemblage
of information and communication systems through which late
modernity operates, are made visible and accessible.
The Matrix
,
whether deliberately or not on the part of its makers, realizes one
of the main aspects of technology in this late part of late modernity.
In a world dominated by computing technology the computer is
no longer simply without 'emblematic or visual power', as Fredric
Jameson puts it, but actually disappearing, becoming invisible.
In this it reveals, in metaphoric form, a central aspect of our lives.
In the developed world at least, we live in a society supersaturated
by digital technology. This was made vividly clear by the furore over
the so-called Millennium Bug, which showed that that technology
is present in almost every aspect of our lives. To some degree at
