The Matrix & Media Ecology

The pages that follow are an in-depth student analysis of the movie, The Matrix, and how that movie shows us concepts of communication and theory. Specifically, I would like to evaluate postmodernism and the ecology of media, pertaining to The Matrix.   

Media ecology was introduced in the 1960s by University of Toronto English professor Marshall McLuhan. The term, “Media” is generic for all human-invented technology that extends the range, speed, or channels of communication. McLuhan's most widely known work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), is a pioneering study in media theory. In it McLuhan proposed that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study—popularly quoted as "the medium is the message". (1)  

Neil Postman, (An American author, media theorist and cultural critic) looks into the matter of how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling, and value; and how our interaction with media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival.

The word ecology implies the study of environments: their structure, content, and impact on people.

An environment is, after all, a complex message system which imposes on human beings certain ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

It structures what we can see and say and, therefore, do. It assigns roles to us and insists on our playing them. It specifies what we are permitted to do and what we are not. Sometimes, as in the case of a courtroom, or classroom, or business office, the specifications are explicit and formal.

In the case of media environments (e.g., books, radio, film, television, etc.), the specifications are more often implicit and informal, half concealed by our assumption that what we are dealing with is not an environment but merely a machine.

Media ecology tries to make these specifications explicit.

It tries to find out what roles media force us to play, how media structure what we are seeing, why media make us feel and act as we do. (2)

By these two men’s definition, The Matrix is a great example of media ecology. Its message being the interaction we have with the machines (i.e. media) we have created and our concepts of control. Do we control our machines, or do they control us? Of course we control them, or do we? The following lines are dialog from a scene in The Matrix Reloaded. Every time you see the word, “machine” replace it with, “media” and when you see the words, “light, heat and air” replace them with “information, news and networking.”

Councillor Harmann: Down here, sometimes I think about all those people still plugged into the Matrix and when I look at these machines I... I can't help thinking that in a way... we are plugged into them.  Neo: But we control these machines; they don't control us.  Councillor Harmann: Of course not. How could they? The idea is pure nonsense. But... it does make one wonder... just... what is control?  Neo: If we wanted, we could shut these machines down.  Councillor Harmann: [Of] course. That's it. You hit it. That's control, isn't it? If we wanted we could smash them to bits. Although, if we did, we'd have to consider what would happen to our lights, our heat, our air...  Neo: So we need machines and they need us, is that your point, Councilor?  Councillor Harmann: No. No point. Old men like me don't bother with making points. There's no point.  Neo: Is that why there are no young men on the council?  Councillor Harmann: Good point. 

Neo: “Why don't you tell me what's on your mind, Councilor?”
Councilor Harmann: “There is so much in this world that I do not understand. See that machine? It has something to do with recycling our water supply. I have absolutely no idea how it works. But I do understand the reason for it to work. I have absolutely no idea how you are able to do some of the things you do, but I believe there's a reason for that as well. I only hope we understand that reason before it's too late.

The Matrix Reloaded is a 2003 American science fiction film and the second installment in The Matrix trilogy, written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. The trilogy stared, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving. It was general release by Warner Bros.

I believe McLuhan and Postman would agree with Councilor Harmann. Resulting from media ecologies vast intertwining (or matrix) with our everyday life, it is near impossible to understand exactly how it works. From the moment we wake up, to the time we close our eyes at night, we are bombarded with media and its effect. Making it hard to distinguish where media stops and humanity starts. However, it is easy to understand the reason for it to work.

 Information, good or bad, is the message of the medium. From speech to written text to wire communication, radio, television, cell phones, and the internet-in-our-hand, our ways of communicating with each other is constantly changing, therefore; so is our environment and so are we. Postman expressed concerns about the coming age of computer technology. He questioned if we were yielding too easily to the “authority” of computation and the values of efficiency and quantification. He pondered whether the quest for technological progress was becoming increasingly more important than being humane.

According to Postman, a new technology always presents us with Faustian bargain—a potential deal with the devil. As Postman was fond of saying, “Technology giveth and technology taketh away… A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided.”

Postman’s media ecology approach asks, “What are the moral implications of this bargain?”

If the founders of The Matrix would have asked this question, I wonder if they would have gotten themselves into as much trouble. If they were to simply evaluate new technology on the scales of moral implications instead of on the scales of profit, would their world still be taken from them? If they would have asked, “What is the best thing this can bring us? What is the worst that can come of it?” Would they still have made the same mistakes?

Although, this is only a futuristic-movie, its fundamental and ethical questions still apply to us in modern day America. With each passing day technology is getting more-and-more advanced and so the moral evaluation and implications of this technology must become more-and-more prevalent. 

Works Cited

1.----1964 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man; 1st Ed. McGraw Hill, NY; reissued MIT Press, 1994, with introduction by Lewis H. Lapham; reissued by Gingko Press, 2003 ISBN 1-58423-073-8

2.. —Neil Postman, “The Reformed English Curriculum.” in A.C. Eurich, ed., High School 1980: The Shape of the Future in American Secondary Education (1970).