Animatrix explain a lot of the reasoning behind their world. Those two made
the third movie (and going back over the first two) a lot more
understandable.
larry
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ben Doom [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 9:57 AM
> To: CF-Community
> Subject: Re: Matrix Question
>
>
> > 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.
>
> That was *totally* not what I got out of the movie. Of course, it's
> been a while since I watched the first one, but I was under the
> impression that they didn't have so much a "soft spot" for us
> as it was
> a combination of revenge motive and (from the last one) an efficiency
> issue. I also seem to recall that after humans "scorched the
> sky" the
> machines turned to us as a source of energy. This was toward
> the end of
> the Machine War.
>
> > 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.
>
> One wonders if the data processing ability that could be harvested
> during sleep would really balance the amount required to maintain the
> Matrix(es).
>
> > 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.
>
> Except the "much later" bit, this I agree with.
>
> > 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).
>
> Hmm. Humans as fusion enablers isn't something that I recall, but I
> don't recall a counterexample either, so I'll stipulate.
>
> > 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.
>
> Of course, this is all a crock without the assumption that enslaving
> humans makes the special fusion work (which doesn't really
> make sense,
> anyway). Thermodynamics tells us that any energy processing system
> (people, internal combustion engines, the gerbil in my PC)
> waste energy.
> Therefore, the machines would be better off finding a way
> to directly
> convert whatever it was they were feeding us to energy, rather than
> using humans (which are pretty inefficient anyway).
>
> > How's that for over thinking a joke? ;^)
>
> Clearly not enough for me. :->
>
>
> --benD
>
>
>
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