“See it, while it is still only fiction.”

It was a pleasure to attend last year the 25th-anniversary screening of The Matrix at the theater! Released in 1999, The Matrix wasn’t the first movie to explore the idea of living inside a simulation. As early as 1973, the German miniseries World on a Wire (Welt am Draht) tackled similar themes. The origins of this concept date even further back to Daniel F. Galouye’s 1964 novel Simulacron-3.

In fact, the roots of the simulation hypothesis stretch far beyond modern times. The Greek philosopher Plato presented a related idea in his famous Allegory of the Cave. In this story, prisoners are chained inside a cave, forced to watch shadows cast on the wall in front of them by objects passing behind them. They take these shadows to be the only reality, unaware of the true world outside the cave.

However, the simulation hypothesis, as we understand it today, gained prominence when Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom published his version in 2003, being part of his paper Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?. It’s likely that The Matrix, as instant entry into pop culture, at least subconsciously influenced this modern interpretation, as Bostrom explained that he did not see the movie while working on his paper. His hypothesis proposes that our reality might be a sophisticated, computer-generated simulation, akin to an advanced virtual world. Essentially, what we perceive as life could be a program created by a more advanced civilization, though we remain unaware of it. While this remains a captivating philosophical notion, physicists and computer scientists have attempted to test it, so far without success.

On the artistic front, the English rock band Muse explored the concept in their 2018 concept album Simulation Theory. Interestingly, the album’s cover art bears more resemblance to the 2018 film Ready Player One, which also delves into the idea of the Metaverse. Also it must be mentioned that in 1999, shortly after the Matrix another movie had been at the theaters, The 13th Floor. Another film again based on Daniel F. Galouye’s Simulacron-3

More of my thoughts:

• Patrick Henz (2021): “Tomorrow’s Business Ethics: Philip K. Dick vs. W. Edwards Deming“, also available as?audiobook
• Patrick Henz (2022): “Into the Metaverse“, also available as?audiobook