Comparison Of 2001: A Space Odyssey And The Matrix

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); Do Androids Dream of

Electric Sheep (1968); Blade Runner (1982); and The Matrix (1999). These move with progressive pessimism about Enlightenment models of knowledge, towards a postmodern culture of simulacra in which reason is unable to discriminate between human originals and cybernetic doubles, or the real w o r l d and the illusion. The deconstruction of the rationally-attainable truth about a stable and finite reality culminates in The Matrix, in which it appears impossible to see through the demonic hallucination generated b y the machine. As suggested in the previous two chapters, the invocation o f the demon as a metaphor signals a mismatch between rational apprehensions of the world, and the tacit,

human

Here, I compare Descartes' demon to Turing'ร test for a talking, intelligent computer. But I argue that whilst Descartes' and Turing's tests incline towards scientifically stable judgements of reality, cybernetics as mediated tìirough the aesthetics of postmodernism proposes a different epistemology. Because the nature of reality is construed as psychologically and discursively constructed, the notion of what is artificial and what is true becomes arbitrary, ideological and subjective. This is particularly so i n relation to Turing's influential conception o f artificial intelligence, for according to Turing success is achieved when a machine is able to deceive a human t r o u g h dissimulatory language. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes considers the prevalence of the false beliefs which he has formerly held.2 In the first meditation, he asks whether it is therefore possible that reality as he apprehends it is an illusion or dream conjured by an a l l - powerful deceiving demon; and i f nothing is "out there" or real, how can he be certain of his own personal existence? In his second meditation, Descartes famously concludes

On the one hand, to

Descartes it appears superficially possible that the real w o r l d is always mediated through agents of deception, whether demons or dreams, since these appear so prevalent i n life. On the other hand, i f even in spite of these conditions and pressures there is still one thing that cannot be doubted ֊ in this case, the fact that there exists a being doing the thinking in the first place - then rationalism receives even greater reinforcement. This is because as the cogito resolves itself to the axiom " I think, I exist," we need also to ask about the nature of the " Г w h i c h performs the t h i n k i n g . T o determine this is automatically to consider a centred ego w h i c h is capable not o n l y o f distinguishing reality f r o m deception, but also the self f r o m the other objects i n the w o r l d that m i g h t seem to resemble it i n some way. This is unlike the psychoanalytic interpretation o f demons, w h i c h suggests that demons are projected f r o m w i t h i n the self's unconscious, so that the self and demons " o u t there"