Posthuman Blues

"The Matrix Reloaded"

"The Matrix Reloaded" was a fun trip. If you liked the first one, you'll probably like this one despite its disconcerting cliffhanger ending. I want to see it again just so I can pay closer attention to

[POSSIBLE "SPOILER" COMING UP...]

the rapid-fire cyber-existential monologue offered by the "Architect" toward the end of the film. Technologically, the movie is jaw-dropping: seamless and convincingly surreal. The sheer novelty value of the first film has diminished, but the writers wisely use the new film as a platform for showing some fascinating new futuristic real-estate. I liked the gritty depiction of the subterranean city of Zion and the exterior shots of the hovercraft seen briefly in the original.

A few new characters could have been safely jettisoned: specifically, the new hacker/pilot (whose moments of obligatory "comic relief" were neither funny nor especially appropriate) and Will Smith's wife, who utters a few wincingly unconvincing lines.

Posthumans: transcendent intellects or soulless freaks?

I'm reading Francis Fukuyama's "Our Posthuman Future." To my dismay, he interprets "posthuman" as a thoroughly negative word, whereas I find it an extremely hopeful term: after all, it implies that there will be some form of presumably superior intelligence after merely human intelligence has vanished from the evolutionary stage. Scientists like Hans Moravec and Marvin Minsky grasp this. But Fukuyama, a philosophical polemic, is more comfortable embracing "human nature" as is.

"Humanity" is a dead end. "Human nature" can be whatever we want it to be. Needless to say, these sorts of grandiose statements carry a great deal of ethical and philosophical ramifications, and I'm not suggesting for one moment that we ignore them. But I don't think Fukuyama's breed of conservatism is the answer we need if we're to escape the next millennium.