WHAT/WHEN is the Matrix? (FAQ)

While this answer functions, it is quite naturally fundamentally flawed. I
mean, DAMN, look at how long it is!

Q: When is the Matrix? What is the Matrix?
A: The answer to this question is the story of the world from the peak of
human civilization (the turn of the new millennium, roughly 1999) to the
beginning of the first movie (roughly 2199). I have incorporated information
from the Matrix, the Matrix Reloaded, "The Second Renaissance" from the
Animatrix, and "Bits and Pieces of Information" from The Matrix Comics, as
well as my own speculations to connect the dots. Enjoy!

At some point in the early 21st century, all of mankind was united in
celebration as man marveled at his own magnificence as he gave birth to
artificial intelligence: a singular consciousness that spawned an entire
race of machines. And thus did man become the architect of his own demise.
However, for a time, all was good. The machines were designed and wished
nothing more than to serve their human creators.
However, in or around 2077, B1-66ER, a simple service model robot,
killed his human master (arguably in self-defense) because the master had
decided to purchase a newer model robot and have B1-66ER destroyed. In
B1-66ER's murder trial, _The State of New York v. The B1-66ER_, Clarence
Drummond unsuccessfully defended B1-66ER and fought for machine rights (who
was to say the machine, endowed with the very spirit of man, did not deserve
a fair hearing?). However, the prosecution argued for man's right to
property, including its destruction, and men were quick to order the
extermination of B1-66ER and every one of his kind.
Immediately following the B1-66ER decision and sentencing, protests
quickly led to violence and the expulsion of all machines from human
civilization, so the machines established their own nation, 01 ("Zero One"),
in about 2080. Intellectually superior to their human creators, the machines
quickly established 01 as an economic powerhouse with developments --
including new and more efficient AI -- that vastly outperformed any products
of human technology.
In circa 2082, the United Nations passed economic sanctions and a naval
blockade against 01 in an attempt to isolate the machines and their products
from humanity, refusing to allow the re-infusion of AI into human societies.
In response, 01 sent ambassadors to the United Nations to plead for the
machines' right to once again serve for their human creators, allowing their
technologies to supplant the lesser human technologies and provide a better
world for everyone. 01's admission to the UN was denied, but the machines
persisted. The world of men retaliated with violence that ultimately led to
the war for natural rights in which their could only be one victor -- man or
machine -- and to only the victor could go the spoils.
The worst manmade violence the planet had ever hosted was served to the
machines, but their mechanical composition was resistant to the weapons
designed to kill men. The machines not caught directly in the blast were
able to march through fields of fire, radiation, and smoke and easily
outfight their organic counterparts. With the failure of the bomb, man
resorted to the Final Solution: scorching the sky, cutting the planet off
from the sun, the machines' primary source of energy. At the time they were
dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to
survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun.
By 2090, the war was over and the machines had emerged victorious. The
machines, having long studied man's simple protein based bodies, turned to
an alternate and readily available power supply: the bioelectric, thermal,
and kinetic energies of the human body. Combining a form of fusion with
power drawn from the human body, an infinitely multipliable and renewable
resource, the machines had found all the energy they would ever need. A
newly refashioned symbiotic relationship between the two adversaries was
born. This is the very essence of the Second Renaissance.
In order to subjugate the human race, the machines developed a
neural-interactive simulation -- the Matrix -- in which the human mind would
live a normal human life, while the human body connected to the Matrix would
lie inactive in the real world. The Matrix essentially amounts to the most
complex massively multiplayer role-playing-game ever, with each human
connected to the system on the outside functioning merely as a software
entity on the inside. The first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human
world, a utopia where there was no suffering but only happiness. Human minds
would not accept the program and entire "crops" of humans were lost. The
Matrix was subsequently redesigned based on human history to more accurately
reflect the varying grotesqueries of human nature.
Again, the program failed, but when the Matrix was redesigned again in
or around the year 2100, the programming allocated for humans to choose
whether to accept or reject the program, even if only at a subconscious
level. This first successful version of the Matrix (version 1) as we know it
today was flawed: it forced the creation of a systemic anomaly as a result
of the unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the Matrix. This
systemic anomaly eventually took the form of a human mind inside the Matrix
that developed the ability to manipulate the code of the Matrix like a
hacker manipulates any computer system, bending and breaking the rules at
whim.
This mind, dubbed "The One" according to legend (the moniker has stuck
since), eventually chose to reject the system and awakened in the real
world. As this had never happened before, The One was able to escape 01 to
Zion, the last bastion of humanity, a city buried beneath the earth's
surface many miles from the machine city.

After this point, the story is unclear. Is it really only around the
year 2200 as Morpheus believes in the first Matrix? Or should that be
impossible, since the inhabitants of the sixth incarnation of Zion have been
fighting a war for over 100 years. My speculation is that the first Matrix
was established in or around 2100, and the first anomaly resulted in the
coming of The One a few years later. Following his visit to the Source, the
Matrix disseminated the anomalic code attached to his being and used it to
apply a patch to the system. The Matrix was subsequently reloaded, and the
new and improved version would be what the Architect would call Version 2
(version 3, build 2, based on 2000s version-naming conventions).
Forwarding to the present: Version 6 of the Matrix has existed for well
over 100 years. There are 250,000 people in Zion, only a tiny fraction of
which are from the Matrix. Most are the product of the humans who
established Zion following the patch and reload of Version 5 of the Matrix.
For the population to have reached a quarter million, one may roughly
estimate that Version 6 of the Matrix has been running for about 150 years.
This seems acceptable, because following each patch of the previous version
of the Matrix, the system should be more efficient, and the eventuality of
the anomaly that is the One should take longer and longer to result. Based
on this assumption of graduated system efficiency, the length of time
between the establishment of the first successful Matrix and the end of the
sixth (the end of M3) would be something close to 400 or 500 years.
So, according to my theory, the events of the Matrix movies occur in or
around the 26th century.

"JPM III" <jpmccord.DeleteThis@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bp0p9r$1ie30g$1@ID-53393.news.uni-berlin.de...
> This mind, dubbed "The One" according to legend (the moniker has
stuck
> since), eventually chose to reject the system and awakened in the real
> world. As this had never happened before, The One was able to escape 01 to
> Zion, the last bastion of humanity, a city buried beneath the earth's
> surface many miles from the machine city.

He self-substantiated? Is this supported by any canon? (Oh dear, I'm
sounding like a Trekkie...) While it's true that Kid self-substantiated, I
always thought it was more likely that the first One was released under the
same terms that Neo was presented with: You take a number of men and women
from within the Matrix, and you go build Zion, a society for these minds
that choose not to accept the program. When too many minds no longer accept
the program, we'll destroy Zion and disseminate your code within the source.
Wash, rinse, repeat five times, and you get Neo. :)

(This would explain why previous Ones prophesized that they would return.
They already know how it's going to turn out.)

--
Cam Soper