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.
It depends on "who" you were talking about - especially in the third movie
(which I actually liked) it became clear that the "machines" were just as
intelligent (in different ways) than we are. Emotional, illogical and
sentimental at times.
It's clear that the "big" programs we've seen (The Architect, the Oracle,
The Keymaker, etc) were all there from the beginning (or close to the
beginning) and pretty much none of them seemed completely antagonistic to
humans. Even the Merovingian seemed to have more nostalgia for humanity
than enmity.
I'm still not sure if I like the fact that the machines are clearly
emotional-driven creatures, but it does work with the themes they built.
>> 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).
If that were the case I don't think it would have to be only during sleep
(although during sleep more processing could go on). Daydreams, having your
mind "wander", etc could all be examples of processing power being utilized.
Ever get a song stuck in your head? That's the Matrix using your
subconscious to loop over a statement block. ;^)
>> 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.
It's during the first film, when Morpheus is explaining things to Neo. He
doesn't specifically say that we're "enablers" but rather something like
"this, combined with a form of fusion, gave the machines all the power they
could ever need." Or something close.
I'm just too lazy to walk the 20 feet to get the DVD. ;^)
>> 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).
Too true - to me that's the core suspension of disbelief in the films. If
you can't accept that you just won't have a good time.
I know people that are too hung up on that to enjoy the movies at all - they
simply can't get past it.
I think that explaining it further - either as a nostalgia for or revenge on
the creators, use of the organic brain as storage or processing, perhaps
even using genetically modified humans as chemical factories (like the
"Axytol Tanks" in "Dune") and petri dishes (we might assume that the
machines would still have some interest in the biological sciences), etc.
When you throw a lot of reasons together it's easier to suspend the
disbelief.
But in reality you can more easily get power from a pile of human manure
than from a pile of humans (well, assuming live humans). ;^) Now if the
power plants had the same plugged in humans all riding stationary bicycles,
well, then we coulda had something!
Jim Davis
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