The Nineties: A Book

by Chuck Klosterman

In that most critical scene from The Matrix, Morpheus and Neo are having their revelatory conversation inside a computer network. They are inside the network so that Morpheus can show Neo the difference between the false reality he once believed and the hard reality he must now accept. But to demonstrate that difference, Morpheus does not use a computer monitor or a hologram or an astral projection. He uses a television. And it’s not some futuristic flat-screen television—it’s a Radiola console model from the 1950s, produced in Australia. This is a small detail with no importance to the plot, but it’s telling. Neo is a cybercriminal who lives on the internet. Computers are his life. Yet his knee-jerk mental conception of human existence is still an analog box connected to nothing, broadcasting two-dimensional images he cannot manipulate. The esoteric philosophy of The Matrix made sense to people not because audiences were starting to understand the newness of the internet. It made sense to people because it was an exaggerated depiction of a televised hyperreality that had been building upon itself for the previous fifty years.