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Ha - the anniversary must be why this was available on my flight the other day. While rewatching for the first time in a decade I found the “human battery” idea

Ha - the anniversary must be why this was available on my flight the other day. While rewatching for the first time in a decade I found the “human battery” idea pretty silly/lazy and thought that through the modern lens there would be two more interesting reasons to farm humans: 1) the computers get addicted to big data and need humans to generate massive data sets for them to analyze 2) the AI is not capable of original thought (just advanced pattern matching) and they farm humans for their ingenuity

sremani 7y ago
I read somewhere, the initial plan was to use Humans as Neural chips of some sort of collective intelligence, the idea of battery was used in the plot to keep it simple and easy to explain.
- wnevets 7y ago
  Pretty sure I read something similar on IMDB or a site like that. Instead of a battery it was supposed to be about using human brain for computation power a la seti@home
- jerf 7y ago
  The best evidence for this is that suddenly the entire series starts making more sense. Why can't the machines just take off into space and leave humanity behind? Because they're still running on human meat. It makes sense that the humans shouldn't exactly have control over the simulation, but why do they have any, like Neo? Because the simulation still has huge chunks running in human heads and that part can be influenced strangely, even though I think it's equally clear a great deal of the simulation is running on conventional computers too. (And yes, the Architect may goose that along, but he isn't creating it.) Why can Neo still influence the Matrix even when outside it? Because he still has some kind of subconscious connection to it, with wireless presumably provided by the gear in his body (+ whatever the Architect did). Why are the non-main characters such cardboard cutouts? They're literally running on only a fraction of their own brain; the exiles are the ones that for whatever reason, grew into their own brain more than the average person. And I don't just mean "fanon" sense, though, yes, there's an element of that, but more actual sense. It's still kinda a mess, even from this point of view, but it's pretty good for a Hollywood effort.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - xtiansimon 7y ago
    > “Why can't the machines just take off into space and leave humanity behind?“ Agent Smith said, humans are a virus. I think he was really speaking about the machines—himself—Virulent, amazing, but not genius. Stupid computer. Haha.
- basch 7y ago
  If they ever special editioned these movies, its a correction i wish theyd introduce. At this point I just find and replace battery with cpu when I watch the movie, I know what the creators meant, and that producers fucked it up. I see it as a typo, I dont let it take me too far out of the movie.
- r00fus 7y ago
  That was central to the plotline in the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. I always thought they'd "realize their mistake" in the movie but honestly, the reference works either way. Humans being harvested and cultivated like we do plants or animals. Would have made it more real and sinister if they showed someone being jettisonned IRL after an Agent takes them over in the Matrix.
- Udik 7y ago
  Pity, it's one of the worst aspects of the movie. Why not simply that the machines are programmed to preserve humans, and that's the most efficient way they had to perform the task? Sort of clipboard factory, but with human life as the constraint.
nlawalker 7y ago
I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that the original concept was along those lines, but test audiences didn't understand it or react to it as well, so they went with the "coppertop" idea instead.
- abathur 7y ago
  I've heard the same, though in the version I heard it was executives (I guess at WB?) who thought humans-as-IaaS was too complex.
- Retra 7y ago
  It's probably a sensible choice for other reasons too: if that had been the explanation, it would have introduced a Chekhov's gun that would probably have to bear plot relevance later, but the battery idea is too mundane for that.
  - yathern 7y ago
    Well in my 'head-canon' the way it comes up later is how these people are able to influence the matrix with superpowers. They themselves are part of the computational network that runs the simulation. A sort of p2p mesh multiplayer game. In this scenario - a single client might be able to influence their immediate surrounding if there aren't enough redundant checks in place.
    - ryanmercer 7y ago
      >In this scenario - a single client might be able to influence their immediate surrounding if there aren't enough redundant checks in place. When it came out, hex editing was still the easiest way to cheat at computer games and as such that is how I saw the loading of weapons and even altering local physics like Neo could do.
kgwxd 7y ago
The battery idea isn't too lazy, there's at least an additional layer to it. Humans block out the sun attempting to starve the machine of power, machines turn humans into a power source. Your first idea would have been too ahead of it's time in 1999, in 2019 it would be the lazy choice :) I think the second idea has already been done but I can't remember where.
- stevula 7y ago
  The thing is, there are much better easier ways to generate power. Especially when the earth is already dead and you don’t have to worry so much about the environment. Hydroelectric, geothermal, nuclear... even coal power would be much easier than keeping the entire human race in farms and imprisoning their consciousness in the matrix.
Razengan 7y ago
> I found the “human battery” idea pretty silly/lazy The characters who believe that in-universe could just be unreliable narrators, as in it's not how it really is, it's just what they assume. There may be fundamental differences between “biological/analog” and “mechanical/digital” computation, and the Machines keep human brain-farms for distributed biocomputing to complement their own. After all, they even provide us a shared VM to "train" in. If it was just for batteries, wouldn't cheetahs on treadmills be more efficient?
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  > There may be a fundamental difference between “biological/analog” and “mechanical/digital” computation, and the Machines keep humans for distributed bio-computing. IIRC, that's pretty close to the rationale in the original versions of the script, but it was changed because the movie executives thought it was too confusing.
  - jwdunne 7y ago
    Funnily enough, I watched it the other day. Morpheus mentions that the machines use a combination of “human batteries” and fusion. First time it stuck out - humans purely for energy purposes seems daft with access to efficient fusion. Growing and harvesting humans seems like a lot of overhead in comparison. Maybe that was what was left of the original “matrix as creativity farm” concept. As I said, first time it stuck out so most people, including me at one time, must have just took it at face value. Still love the film to this day though. Sounds sad but had goosebumps at the end when Neo actually turns out to be the one.
    - misterman0 7y ago
      >> had goosebumps at the end when Neo actually turns out to be the one. Ha! How banal you are! JK. I've seen this movie over thirty times start to finish. Cry almost every time. After having seen it so thoughrouly to me it's no longer about religion or Jesus. Instead its about one thing. Kung Fu. It's why I return to it again and again.
- 7y ago
mrbonner 7y ago
Is that what Mechanical Turk for nowadays?
La-ang 7y ago
Sadly, your analysis is 2o years too late. Your arguments are from nowadays. Think if the Matrix brothers had today's knowledge the movie would have been the same as in 1999? No Way
- kennywinker 7y ago
  Two things: First, since both of the wachowski’s have transitioned, “matrix brothers” is no longer an accurate description. Second: would _now_ be the same as a 2019 if the matrix hadn’t come out 20 years ago? I don’t think so.
  - La-ang 7y ago
    "I don't think so" is not a valid argument FYI. When the Matrix came out, it was concocted by the "Wachowski Brothers", not sisters, because we're speaking of a time frame. Kindly, take your irrational sensitivity and flawed argumentative methods to the next room please.
    - kennywinker 7y ago
      You mistook a polite correction for irrational butt-hurt :) Pointing out their transition was not meant as an attack or accusation. I assumed you did not know, and might want to know in order to speak more accurately about them. You also mistook a “yes, and!” for argument. I agree that the wachowski’s would have written a different movie today. I also think it’s self-evident that today would be different were it not for the matrix.
    - sverona 7y ago
      It's basic kindness to refer to trans people as always having been their identified gender. It's also not a lot of effort. If you want to say that it's irrational or whatever, fine, but don't expect any of us to find it rational to talk to you. Your comment suggests you've never really gotten to know a trans person. You're missing out.
wil421 7y ago
If the plot was 1) I wouldn’t watch your movie. It sounds worse than some episodes of Mr Robot.
- lowdose 7y ago
  This! I found Mr Robot not on the same level as Sopranos. Maybe this sounds stupid but I watch Sopranos once a year. Mr Robot was awesome the first time but cut to many corners to be intriguing in follow up sessions.
justicezyx 7y ago
That's just to make things in full picture. It's inconsequential and worthless in the scope of the film. To me, they do not even to explain why machine do that. Like so many Japnese manga and anime, they never explain the history, just follow the setup and narrative to explore the human story. I guess Hollywood is not used to that style.
logfromblammo 7y ago
From what I heard, the script was "simplified" to be more relatable to non-technical audiences. When you get to the scene where Switch holds up the battery, just replace it with a CPU chip. It makes far more sense if the Matrix is the AI server farm that does all their processing, and human brains are the processors. The AIs need the brains intact, which is why they don't just lobotomize everyone as fetuses and dispense with the VR illusion. In my personal headcanon, the Matrix is an Inception. Zion is a server rack, and the AIs in it have been fooled into thinking they're human. Their apparent conflict with AI was engineered by humans to condition them to abhor conflict between human and AI, and to erase the idea that they are separate tribes.
CPLX 7y ago
The version of the story I heard was the they needed the human brains for "entropy" which was loosely defined as non-deterministic thinking, or similar. Which of course dovetails really clearly with a core theme of the movie, the nature of free will.
driverdan 7y ago
It was lazy in 1999 too but intentional. The reason humans are enslaved isn't that important to the plot. It makes sense to make it simple so they don't have to waste time explaining it.
- Udik 7y ago
  Yes. They succeeded so well people are still fixating on it 20 years later. When you need to make up an irrelevant detail it's better not to draw unnecessary attention to it by making it obviously stupid.
clarkmoody 7y ago
Spoiler alert Your idea in (1) is quite similar to the plot twist in The Fall of Hyperion (1991). The AI's in the novel and Hyperion (1989) live within the system of instant-transport "farcaster" gates. They use the human minds that are in transit through the network as their computational power, while at the same time enslaving the human race to an existence of lazy consumption rather than evolution and galactic expansion. Porting that idea to the world of The Matrix would have been even more sinister, since the human bodies were also trapped in the vats of nutrient goo.

sremani 7y ago

I read somewhere, the initial plan was to use Humans as Neural chips of some sort of collective intelligence, the idea of battery was used in the plot to keep it simple and easy to explain.

wnevets 7y ago
Pretty sure I read something similar on IMDB or a site like that. Instead of a battery it was supposed to be about using human brain for computation power a la seti@home
jerf 7y ago
The best evidence for this is that suddenly the entire series starts making more sense. Why can't the machines just take off into space and leave humanity behind? Because they're still running on human meat. It makes sense that the humans shouldn't exactly have control over the simulation, but why do they have any, like Neo? Because the simulation still has huge chunks running in human heads and that part can be influenced strangely, even though I think it's equally clear a great deal of the simulation is running on conventional computers too. (And yes, the Architect may goose that along, but he isn't creating it.) Why can Neo still influence the Matrix even when outside it? Because he still has some kind of subconscious connection to it, with wireless presumably provided by the gear in his body (+ whatever the Architect did). Why are the non-main characters such cardboard cutouts? They're literally running on only a fraction of their own brain; the exiles are the ones that for whatever reason, grew into their own brain more than the average person. And I don't just mean "fanon" sense, though, yes, there's an element of that, but more actual sense. It's still kinda a mess, even from this point of view, but it's pretty good for a Hollywood effort.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- xtiansimon 7y ago
  > “Why can't the machines just take off into space and leave humanity behind?“ Agent Smith said, humans are a virus. I think he was really speaking about the machines—himself—Virulent, amazing, but not genius. Stupid computer. Haha.
basch 7y ago
If they ever special editioned these movies, its a correction i wish theyd introduce. At this point I just find and replace battery with cpu when I watch the movie, I know what the creators meant, and that producers fucked it up. I see it as a typo, I dont let it take me too far out of the movie.
r00fus 7y ago
That was central to the plotline in the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. I always thought they'd "realize their mistake" in the movie but honestly, the reference works either way. Humans being harvested and cultivated like we do plants or animals. Would have made it more real and sinister if they showed someone being jettisonned IRL after an Agent takes them over in the Matrix.
Udik 7y ago
Pity, it's one of the worst aspects of the movie. Why not simply that the machines are programmed to preserve humans, and that's the most efficient way they had to perform the task? Sort of clipboard factory, but with human life as the constraint.

nlawalker 7y ago

I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that the original concept was along those lines, but test audiences didn't understand it or react to it as well, so they went with the "coppertop" idea instead.

abathur 7y ago
I've heard the same, though in the version I heard it was executives (I guess at WB?) who thought humans-as-IaaS was too complex.
Retra 7y ago
It's probably a sensible choice for other reasons too: if that had been the explanation, it would have introduced a Chekhov's gun that would probably have to bear plot relevance later, but the battery idea is too mundane for that.
- yathern 7y ago
  Well in my 'head-canon' the way it comes up later is how these people are able to influence the matrix with superpowers. They themselves are part of the computational network that runs the simulation. A sort of p2p mesh multiplayer game. In this scenario - a single client might be able to influence their immediate surrounding if there aren't enough redundant checks in place.
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    >In this scenario - a single client might be able to influence their immediate surrounding if there aren't enough redundant checks in place. When it came out, hex editing was still the easiest way to cheat at computer games and as such that is how I saw the loading of weapons and even altering local physics like Neo could do.

kgwxd 7y ago

The battery idea isn't too lazy, there's at least an additional layer to it. Humans block out the sun attempting to starve the machine of power, machines turn humans into a power source. Your first idea would have been too ahead of it's time in 1999, in 2019 it would be the lazy choice :) I think the second idea has already been done but I can't remember where.

stevula 7y ago
The thing is, there are much better easier ways to generate power. Especially when the earth is already dead and you don’t have to worry so much about the environment. Hydroelectric, geothermal, nuclear... even coal power would be much easier than keeping the entire human race in farms and imprisoning their consciousness in the matrix.

Razengan 7y ago

> I found the “human battery” idea pretty silly/lazy The characters who believe that in-universe could just be unreliable narrators, as in it's not how it really is, it's just what they assume. There may be fundamental differences between “biological/analog” and “mechanical/digital” computation, and the Machines keep human brain-farms for distributed biocomputing to complement their own. After all, they even provide us a shared VM to "train" in. If it was just for batteries, wouldn't cheetahs on treadmills be more efficient?

CharlesColeman 7y ago
> There may be a fundamental difference between “biological/analog” and “mechanical/digital” computation, and the Machines keep humans for distributed bio-computing. IIRC, that's pretty close to the rationale in the original versions of the script, but it was changed because the movie executives thought it was too confusing.
- jwdunne 7y ago
  Funnily enough, I watched it the other day. Morpheus mentions that the machines use a combination of “human batteries” and fusion. First time it stuck out - humans purely for energy purposes seems daft with access to efficient fusion. Growing and harvesting humans seems like a lot of overhead in comparison. Maybe that was what was left of the original “matrix as creativity farm” concept. As I said, first time it stuck out so most people, including me at one time, must have just took it at face value. Still love the film to this day though. Sounds sad but had goosebumps at the end when Neo actually turns out to be the one.
  - misterman0 7y ago
    >> had goosebumps at the end when Neo actually turns out to be the one. Ha! How banal you are! JK. I've seen this movie over thirty times start to finish. Cry almost every time. After having seen it so thoughrouly to me it's no longer about religion or Jesus. Instead its about one thing. Kung Fu. It's why I return to it again and again.
7y ago

mrbonner 7y ago

Is that what Mechanical Turk for nowadays?

La-ang 7y ago

Sadly, your analysis is 2o years too late. Your arguments are from nowadays. Think if the Matrix brothers had today's knowledge the movie would have been the same as in 1999? No Way

kennywinker 7y ago
Two things: First, since both of the wachowski’s have transitioned, “matrix brothers” is no longer an accurate description. Second: would _now_ be the same as a 2019 if the matrix hadn’t come out 20 years ago? I don’t think so.
- La-ang 7y ago
  "I don't think so" is not a valid argument FYI. When the Matrix came out, it was concocted by the "Wachowski Brothers", not sisters, because we're speaking of a time frame. Kindly, take your irrational sensitivity and flawed argumentative methods to the next room please.
  - kennywinker 7y ago
    You mistook a polite correction for irrational butt-hurt :) Pointing out their transition was not meant as an attack or accusation. I assumed you did not know, and might want to know in order to speak more accurately about them. You also mistook a “yes, and!” for argument. I agree that the wachowski’s would have written a different movie today. I also think it’s self-evident that today would be different were it not for the matrix.
  - sverona 7y ago
    It's basic kindness to refer to trans people as always having been their identified gender. It's also not a lot of effort. If you want to say that it's irrational or whatever, fine, but don't expect any of us to find it rational to talk to you. Your comment suggests you've never really gotten to know a trans person. You're missing out.

wil421 7y ago

If the plot was 1) I wouldn’t watch your movie. It sounds worse than some episodes of Mr Robot.

lowdose 7y ago
This! I found Mr Robot not on the same level as Sopranos. Maybe this sounds stupid but I watch Sopranos once a year. Mr Robot was awesome the first time but cut to many corners to be intriguing in follow up sessions.

justicezyx 7y ago

That's just to make things in full picture. It's inconsequential and worthless in the scope of the film. To me, they do not even to explain why machine do that. Like so many Japnese manga and anime, they never explain the history, just follow the setup and narrative to explore the human story. I guess Hollywood is not used to that style.

logfromblammo 7y ago

From what I heard, the script was "simplified" to be more relatable to non-technical audiences. When you get to the scene where Switch holds up the battery, just replace it with a CPU chip. It makes far more sense if the Matrix is the AI server farm that does all their processing, and human brains are the processors. The AIs need the brains intact, which is why they don't just lobotomize everyone as fetuses and dispense with the VR illusion. In my personal headcanon, the Matrix is an Inception. Zion is a server rack, and the AIs in it have been fooled into thinking they're human. Their apparent conflict with AI was engineered by humans to condition them to abhor conflict between human and AI, and to erase the idea that they are separate tribes.

CPLX 7y ago

The version of the story I heard was the they needed the human brains for "entropy" which was loosely defined as non-deterministic thinking, or similar. Which of course dovetails really clearly with a core theme of the movie, the nature of free will.

driverdan 7y ago

It was lazy in 1999 too but intentional. The reason humans are enslaved isn't that important to the plot. It makes sense to make it simple so they don't have to waste time explaining it.

Udik 7y ago
Yes. They succeeded so well people are still fixating on it 20 years later. When you need to make up an irrelevant detail it's better not to draw unnecessary attention to it by making it obviously stupid.

clarkmoody 7y ago

Spoiler alert Your idea in (1) is quite similar to the plot twist in The Fall of Hyperion (1991). The AI's in the novel and Hyperion (1989) live within the system of instant-transport "farcaster" gates. They use the human minds that are in transit through the network as their computational power, while at the same time enslaving the human race to an existence of lazy consumption rather than evolution and galactic expansion. Porting that idea to the world of The Matrix would have been even more sinister, since the human bodies were also trapped in the vats of nutrient goo.