There are conflicting opinions as to whether or not the Matrix is the entire world, or not.
I personally believe (and have illustrated as such in various RP that I do) that it is, and here's why I think it is, or if not, why it should be.
The capacity is there. Artificial Intelligence and then sentience alone is a huge technology step. Amassing an entire civilisation is another massive leap. Simulating even a basic Matrix is - again, a massive step. Add to that that over numerous 'occurences' of the Matrix we're looking at between maybe several hundred to almost 1000 years, and there's nothing to suggest that the machines couldn't run an entire world simulation.
Agent Smith alludes to "billions of people, just living out their lives" - note billions. It's simply impossible to cram that number of people into one city, even if it is a 'Mega City'.
Mega Cities have been theorised as the 'future' for living spaces - that is, our current cities will spread across states or segments of countries (in the case of the UK), with the result that maybe two or three cities plus all intermediate countryside and suburbs will become one large MegaCity.
But even that is not enough to hold billions of people.
Someone once floated the theory that everyone living 'outside' the MegaCity is simply in a deeper form of sleep, and is 'activated' with preprogrammed memories as soon as they enter the City and become 'active'.
But to me, that doesn't make sense. Why not do that with all humans? If the goal is simply to keep the population passive, they could do that with everybody. It also doesn't allow for the 1% of people OUTSIDE the MegaCity that reject the simulation.
Another point, is that an entire world is believable.
The Matrix is, at the end of the day, a simulation. As comparatively primitive as human brains are to the mind of say, the Oracle, we still have an uncanny ability to know what's up. And the choice is always offered at a subconscious level whether or not to accept the Matrix.
For 99%, the choice is yes - why? Because they are being fed information that sits perfectly well with their human mind's interpretation of normality. Transitioning between being in an active MegaCity, then going to a 'sleep' state because they're visiting London, for example, would surely begin to jar against the sense that everything is normal.
There are overheads to consider on this too. The infrastructure to run the Matrix is relatively stable. They make the world, the humans live in it, under a measure of control.
Once you start dealing with implanting memories - and don't forget they have to strike a natural chord with the human brain - you start needing massive resources to keep track of every person's memory, cross referencing them with everyone else's that they may have come into contact with - and on a shopping spree in December that could be hundreds or even thousands of people - and of course keep those in check with all PAST memories.
Whilst I believe this is possible for a civilisation as advanced as the machines' is, I believe it to be a massive waste of resources, and a potentially damaging one.
Another issue with this, in two ways, is the newspapers that Neo read in the Matrix. Morpheus seen at Heathrow, etc.
For one, this would suggest that there is more to the Matrix than one city.
For another thing, we get into a murky situation - this information is planted to make coppertops believe that the London they know is real. But if it WAS fake, then Morpheus was NEVER there - as a redpill he could not, as there was no 'construct' to hack in to. In fact, he was probably somewhere else in the Matrix - being seen by other people, creating totally conflicting accounts and memories.
Whilst this could be attributed to mistaken identity or wannabes, it is my opinion that it served the machines' purpose to perpetrate Morpheus as a dangerous man who was top of the Most Wanted list, and would only dilute their efforts in bringing him in by introducing 'dupes' and 'doubles'.
Also, there's the problem of The Merv - the Chateau. This is clearly a place that has been built (the mountains) by machines, and modified (the Chateau) by the Merv. It makes no sense to simply have a load of mountains created, they serve no purpose. Plus then they would know exactly where the Merv was, and could just delete that sector of the Matrix itself, surely?
And the code. When searching for Niobe and Ghost, the operator of the Mjolnir scrolls out from a code glyph which is the MegaCity as we know. Theoretically - for some - the only place in the Matrix.
Yet once he is zoomed out, the glyph disappears in a huge rainstorm of code. If that ONE glyph represents an entire city, what is the rest of it?
Sure, there are programs created to govern the behaviour of the environment and so on, but it simply doesn't sit right with me that ALL of the extra code we see is simply 'extraneous' programs.
Lastly (I think) - why not?
Why should it NOT be real? The machines had all the data on us that they required. They could easily create a replica - either direct or modified - of the entire planet if they so wished. In my view, the negatives and potential problems of NOT doing so outweigh the negatives and potential problems of actually doing it.
I personally believe (and have illustrated as such in various RP that I do) that it is, and here's why I think it is, or if not, why it should be.
The capacity is there. Artificial Intelligence and then sentience alone is a huge technology step. Amassing an entire civilisation is another massive leap. Simulating even a basic Matrix is - again, a massive step. Add to that that over numerous 'occurences' of the Matrix we're looking at between maybe several hundred to almost 1000 years, and there's nothing to suggest that the machines couldn't run an entire world simulation.
Agent Smith alludes to "billions of people, just living out their lives" - note billions. It's simply impossible to cram that number of people into one city, even if it is a 'Mega City'.
Mega Cities have been theorised as the 'future' for living spaces - that is, our current cities will spread across states or segments of countries (in the case of the UK), with the result that maybe two or three cities plus all intermediate countryside and suburbs will become one large MegaCity.
But even that is not enough to hold billions of people.
Someone once floated the theory that everyone living 'outside' the MegaCity is simply in a deeper form of sleep, and is 'activated' with preprogrammed memories as soon as they enter the City and become 'active'.
But to me, that doesn't make sense. Why not do that with all humans? If the goal is simply to keep the population passive, they could do that with everybody. It also doesn't allow for the 1% of people OUTSIDE the MegaCity that reject the simulation.
Another point, is that an entire world is believable.
The Matrix is, at the end of the day, a simulation. As comparatively primitive as human brains are to the mind of say, the Oracle, we still have an uncanny ability to know what's up. And the choice is always offered at a subconscious level whether or not to accept the Matrix.
For 99%, the choice is yes - why? Because they are being fed information that sits perfectly well with their human mind's interpretation of normality. Transitioning between being in an active MegaCity, then going to a 'sleep' state because they're visiting London, for example, would surely begin to jar against the sense that everything is normal.
There are overheads to consider on this too. The infrastructure to run the Matrix is relatively stable. They make the world, the humans live in it, under a measure of control.
Once you start dealing with implanting memories - and don't forget they have to strike a natural chord with the human brain - you start needing massive resources to keep track of every person's memory, cross referencing them with everyone else's that they may have come into contact with - and on a shopping spree in December that could be hundreds or even thousands of people - and of course keep those in check with all PAST memories.
Whilst I believe this is possible for a civilisation as advanced as the machines' is, I believe it to be a massive waste of resources, and a potentially damaging one.
Another issue with this, in two ways, is the newspapers that Neo read in the Matrix. Morpheus seen at Heathrow, etc.
For one, this would suggest that there is more to the Matrix than one city.
For another thing, we get into a murky situation - this information is planted to make coppertops believe that the London they know is real. But if it WAS fake, then Morpheus was NEVER there - as a redpill he could not, as there was no 'construct' to hack in to. In fact, he was probably somewhere else in the Matrix - being seen by other people, creating totally conflicting accounts and memories.
Whilst this could be attributed to mistaken identity or wannabes, it is my opinion that it served the machines' purpose to perpetrate Morpheus as a dangerous man who was top of the Most Wanted list, and would only dilute their efforts in bringing him in by introducing 'dupes' and 'doubles'.
Also, there's the problem of The Merv - the Chateau. This is clearly a place that has been built (the mountains) by machines, and modified (the Chateau) by the Merv. It makes no sense to simply have a load of mountains created, they serve no purpose. Plus then they would know exactly where the Merv was, and could just delete that sector of the Matrix itself, surely?
And the code. When searching for Niobe and Ghost, the operator of the Mjolnir scrolls out from a code glyph which is the MegaCity as we know. Theoretically - for some - the only place in the Matrix.
Yet once he is zoomed out, the glyph disappears in a huge rainstorm of code. If that ONE glyph represents an entire city, what is the rest of it?
Sure, there are programs created to govern the behaviour of the environment and so on, but it simply doesn't sit right with me that ALL of the extra code we see is simply 'extraneous' programs.
Lastly (I think) - why not?
Why should it NOT be real? The machines had all the data on us that they required. They could easily create a replica - either direct or modified - of the entire planet if they so wished. In my view, the negatives and potential problems of NOT doing so outweigh the negatives and potential problems of actually doing it.
