was not specifically to keep us "sedated" but rather to keep our minds
active so that we'd generate more juice.
As to why humans you can just say because electrics eels may not have had
the proclivity to generate a messiah and escape the matrix, thus making for
a pretty boring movie. ;^)
In the mythos of the movie (which of course requires some hefty suspension
of disbelief already) you might say:
1) The machines have a "soft spot" for humans in that we created them. They
may not want to see humans exterminated, just controlled. They may not have
meant to generate power in the first place, but after centuries (or
millennia) of keeping us alive and controlled they decided (as any good
machine would) to make use of the obvious resources until finally we were
their only resource for power.
2) Although all we've seen in the power-generation aspects of the farms it
may also be that the human mind is also used as a data storage and
processing device. Lower organisms wouldn't work as well in this regard.
You could also say that dreaming is actually the by product of the mind at
rest running program packets for the machines like an idle desktop running
"seti at home". It would be interesting (although too late in the movies)
to find out that "unplugged" humans never dream.
3) Since the power plants weren't constructed until much later, after the
war ("we burned the sky" in the movie - presumably a reference to nuclear
winter) we might assume that animal life had become more than a little
scarce. Maybe electric eels (and pretty much everything else) were just
simply extinct.
4) Even if there were electric eels around there's still basic science to
consider. The electricity generated by an eel isn't really suitable to our
(or presumably the machines) purposes, its direct current and packs a jolt,
but is extremely quick and may not be useful to actually power something
(it's so fast that it really couldn't, for example, be used to charge a
battery). Slow and steady may win the race with the "special type of
fusion" developed by the machines (remember it's not the human body per se
that generates the power but rather the bodies power that does something to
allow these fusion reactors to work).
Also there's still entropy to consider - the eels would have to eat
voraciously to create the charges, perhaps more than the equivalent in
humans would have to eat. You never can get more energy that you put in.
Also much of an eels body is dedicated to the electrical organs which just
aren't good eating - recycling the eels bodies for food for the others may
not be as practical as with humans.
How's that for over thinking a joke? ;^)
Jim Davis
_____
From: brobborb [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 7:03 PM
To: CF-Community
Subject: Re: Matrix Question
How was it explained that they got electricity from humans? electrical
signals made by their brains right? ok ok, why not breed electric
eels?!!!!!
more electricty!!!!
----- Original Message -----
From: William H Bowen
To: CF-Community
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 5:36 PM
Subject: Re: Matrix Question
You'd have to go all the way back to the first Matrix to answer this
question. There was a great huge baby farm in the scene when Neo wakes
up. The whole process is explained in a neat little package.
The fetuses (feti? fetuseses?) gestate in a box (symbolic of their
struggle against oppression/reality). then the harvesters (big 4 legged
spidery/walky things) pluck them and put them into the tubes. Not
explained is why they apparently "birth" the babies and then put them
into a cocoon with a liquid suspension in it...(there's a shot of a baby
with tubes stuck in its body laying in an empty pod while it fills with
the pink jelly...)
hrmmm... also, how come the ectoplasmic residue from Poltergeist and
Ghostbusters the "mood slime" from Ghostbusters II, the suspension from
the Matrix, is all pinkish orange? Same FX contractor/coordinator? Is
there an ectoplasm storehouse somewhere in Burbank?
will
brobborb wrote:
> my question is, why didn't they clone humans or impregnate women
> artificially, that way, giving them more humans! I'm sure they had
> the technology :P
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Charlie Griefer
> To: CF-Community
> Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 4:31 PM
> Subject: Matrix Question
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Andre Turrettini" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "CF-Community" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 3:22 PM
> Subject: RE: The Da Vinci code
>
> > I could be a human battery?
> >
> > > You think that's air you're breathing?
>
> ok...this made me think of a question I had regarding the Matrix.
>
> Humans are batteries, kept in little human-battery pods (where else?).
> We're plugged into the Matrix to keep us content and sedate while
we're
> lying there getting juiced. But...we're still growing old in our
pods.
> Eventually, a body dies.
>
> How/when/where do the humans procreate outside of the Matrix in order
to
> keep the machines in a constant supply of batteries? Or is the
> implication
> (or explicit statement that I might have missed) that we're all test
> tube
> babies?
>
_____
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