Two years ago, when I watched Terminator 3, I reminded myself of the great Hollywood prophecy of human species being ruled by artificial intelligence at some point in future. It has been repeated so often in movies that we have almost taken it for granted. Watching The Matrix, I Robot, and A.I. does not even shock us. It’s all there, taken for granted, like Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov predicted in their almost delusional stories. But what is the core belief in all these stories? How in the first place these great story tellers even are able to think of such ideas? De novo origin of ideas is a strange phenomenon for human species. There should be something that forces us to think of such deterministic story lines, such doomsday plots… Is there something obvious but unconscious that we miss? Do we need to stand afar and look at the bigger picture to find some clue?
Someone said that you get lost in detail if you stare at a piece of art from close quarters, but if you stand at a distance you might end up seeing only blobs of colors, say blue and red. And that would be the bigger picture. I want to see the bigger picture; I want to be aware of the core of origin of these ideas, these seemingly bizarre story lines. These thoughts haunted me, are haunting me and will haunt me. Like you all, I don’t like being haunted and hounded by such irrevocable questions. I want answers and that’s why I am pursuing it.
First of all we need to know what the matrix is. How I would be using it here? It is not the literal concept from the movie that am referring to. It is something symbolic that would signify some thing pervasive, all inclusive and yet hidden from even the most careful observer. It would be something that is controlling us, yet does deceive us in believing that we control it. It is something we do not need and yet we are convinced that we need it. It should be something invented by human beings, yet something that is inventing new human traits now.
I suggest you read a few papers written by Dr.Balagangadhar Rao and his book "Heathen in his blindness".He is the head of research centre for comparative science of cultures at Ghent University , Belgium.
In his "The Heathen in his Blindness", Balaganghadara considers the particular Western process of acquisition of knowledge as an intrinsic part of what he called a cultural ‘configuration of learning’. The process of learning and learning-how-to-learn is a culturally determined phenomenon. There are different systems of learning, which sometimes interact. The configuration of learning which is dominant in the West, is strongly connected to the Western religious system, in particular Christianity: ‘religion constitutes a particular configuration of learning and meta-learning, in which all learning activities are subordinated to ‘‘theoretical learning’’. Science, originating in the Western religious system, is part of a culture-specific configuration of learning. And only gradually, is science transformed from this local Western context into a global, hegemonic position.