>-----Original Message----- >From: William T Goodall [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2003 6:57 PM >To: Killer Bs Discussion >Subject: Re: Picking apart the Matrix - spoilers > > > >On Sunday, June 8, 2003, at 01:09 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> In a message dated 6/7/2003 2:36:37 PM Eastern Standard Time, >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >> >>> In addition, how does this all work? where does the energy to power >>> the >>> humans come from? We get out energy from food, which >inevitably get's >>> it's >>> energy from Sol. So in the story, where does the energy for >>> the food come >>> from?
In The Matrix, there was reference to the fact that a catyclism occurred on the surface to force humanity underground. The robots then took over. I believe that this idea was ripped off from a Phillip K. Dick short story. >> >> Using humans or any other animal as an energy source is of course >> foolish since the energy needed to create a human is far >greater than >> the energy that the human can generate. You could run machines on >> plants thus converting sunlight into complex carbohydrates >that can be >> used as fuel. But why bother with this - just use mechanical devices >> to collect solar energy. An ounce of flesh has more energy than an ounce of solar material, I think, by a magnitude. A body needs few things to create energy - Water, Oxygen, Carbon, and Hydrogen - most of which can be extracted from water and the ground. Flesh is quite efficient at generating heat - in fact, without catalysts used during protein synthesis, the operating temperature of the chemical reactions could range in the 300 degree F range(IIRC). Biological heat engines could be very efficient at converting these elements into energy, and would probably be difficult to duplicate. Consider that the engineering costs involved in creating new engines is efficient as well, where all parts of the engine are recycled, and there is a large pool of design (DNA) to gain greater efficiencies. The reason humans were selected, was because it was found that only humans had the adaptability to survive for a lifetime as a heat engine. A human body generates 100 Watts of energy at rest. The United States today uses 3.5 Gigawatts. The robots would need 3.5 billion humans to match the same requirement the U.S. has on a daily basis. They must supplement with petroleum and nuclear reactors. Is there any mention of the number of humans being exploited? Nerd From Hell > >SPOILER WARNING if you haven't seen :Reloaded. > >S >P >O >I >L >E >R > >S >P >O >I >L >E >R > >S >P >O >I >L >E >R > >S >P >O >I >L >E >R > >S >P >O >I >L >E >R > >S >P >O >I >L >E >R > >Since the ending of :Reloaded casts doubt over everything that was >presented as 'true' in the original _The Matrix_ this, and >every other >question about the trilogy, will have to wait for part III for a >resolution. Since the whole 'being used as an energy source' >is part of >the mythology of the 'free' humans, and that mythology turns >out not to >be the whole story. > >The ending of :Reloaded suggests that Zion, along with the Matrix, is >inside a larger meta-Matrix. But since that is so obvious, it is >probably a red herring and the real answer is something else. Or maybe >not... > >-- >William T Goodall >Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk >Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ > >One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, >lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of >their C programs. -- Robert Firth > >_______________________________________________ >http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l > _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
