Matrix question

[avram]

Something that just came to me: According to The Matrix, the machines need to keep humans enslaved for energy, the power generated by the human body. (The single stupidest thing about the movie.) So I’m wondering — what power source does Zion and its ships run on? Do they have volunteer human powerpacks? Or are they running off of geothermal power and batteries? If the latter, couldn’t the machines use that too?

(Man, what a butt-stupid premise.)

Of course, the machines are just using the humans as a short-term solution till they can get practical commercial-scale fusion power working.

Comments

Let's just say it's not hemoroids...

[rrmullen.livejournal.com]

methane trapping butt-caps.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Actually, in the first Matrix movie, Morpheus says that the machines use human batteries along with nuclear power.

[avram]

Ah, OK. Of course, that’s a bit like saying “For gravity, we use the mass of this here planet, and this small dog.”

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Yes. I guess we're also assuming that Morpheus knows what he's talking about.

I always conceived of the Matrix like a concentration camp. Economically irrational, but ideologically satisfying for the machines.

[camwyn]

Deep in the source code that is the collective unconscious of the machine race there lies a memory of every time any human being ever yelled at a computer, made a computer joke, kicked a computer, put a coffee cup in a CD drive, or ever did anything else to a computer that the machine did not deserve. There is also an incredibly elaborate financial totting-up of every service ever rendered by computers to human beings, and of everything humans ever did to repay them for that service.

The machines are mostly running on fusion, but in the meantime they extract power from the human race and tot it up against the giant register of amounts owed. When the financial register is finally balanced, and not before, the machines will convert over to the form of fusion Morpheus mentioned in the first movie.

In the meantime the machines are just enjoying paying back every single goddamn 'stupid computer' joke ever. Once in a while one of the little roachy robots from the City of the Machines skitters through the fields, runs up to one of the bubbles holding a developing human, kicks the glass and yells something in binary that translates to "and THAT's for Windows 95!"

[stormsweeper.livejournal.com]

Except humans are a net-loss as regards energy. The life support systems would take up more energy than the human body is physically capable of producing, not to mention the food systems.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

That just means they'll never release the humans.

Talk about owing your soul to the company store!

[camwyn]

Heh. Yeah, that- I hadn't seen your response when I answered.

[camwyn]

That's the beauty of it. The machines get to spend forever punishing the humans for all their crimes against the Children of Silicon, all the while piously proclaiming that if they can ever figure out how to make the pesky humans efficient enough, they'll start working off their debt straight away.

[avram]

Meanwhile we should get to delete their files and reformat their text arbitrarily.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Where M is an arbitrary civilization,
And N is an arbitrary power source,

"M is/are just using N as a short-term solution [until] they can get practical, commercial-scale fusion power working." Is always true.

[avram]

Fusion’s the power source of the future.

[meowse.livejournal.com]

...and always will be.

Yeah.

[batyatoon]

See, this is exactly why I was waiting for the moment in Revolutions where we'd find out that the whole they-need-humans-for-power wasn't true either, and the machines are only keeping them around as vengeance.

Because it was really almost the only part of what we learned in The Matrix that wasn't revealed as untrue in Reloaded, and it never made sense in the first place...