James Rogers wrote:
> On Sun, 28 May 2000, Ross A. Finlayson wrote:
> >
> > They are certainly many scenes in the movie that do not correspond to hard
> > science, nor to precedence within the movie. When Trinity shoots the agent
> > on the roof, she says "dodge this", why does he not? Well that it did not.
>
> It actually goes beyond this. Why do any of the agents bullets ever miss?
>
That is a very good point.
>
> It seems that the agents have virtually unlimited processing capacity at
> their disposal but limited bandwidth into the Matrix, less apparently
> than even the humans. Clearly the agents aren't a physical part of the
> Matrix, otherwise they would be able respond almost instantaneously to
> rapidly changing event streams in the Matrix.
>
Yes, that, or they could nuke the block.
It appears that in large part the agents were subject to the ruleset. The
possible exception is that they could move ot any representation of a human
output, a form of possession, where they also appeared to retain their form and
accoutrements upon possession.
>
> One thing that is clear from the movie, and which may have ramifications
> in the sequels, is that there seem to be several very large systems in
> existence with Matrix-class computational abilities, all of which are
> loosely interconnected. These systems appear to be quite capable of
> running one or more AIs.
>
> The movie shows a basic human versus machine conflict, but it seems to me
> that this is only because the movie was written from the perspective of the
> humans there. I suspect that the larger picture includes several different
> players, most of which are not human. Certain aspects of the plot seem to
> suggest this, almost to the extent that the humans are pawns in someone
> else's game. For example, the humans in aggregate may very well have more
> aggregate bandwidth into the Matrix than the parties that actually control
> the Matrix. An enemy of the current owner of the Matrix may have an
> interest in helping the humans subvert the Matrix if it has damaging
> consequences to the owner.
>
> -James Rogers
> jamesr@best.com
Yes these are issues which we might surmise but not yet know. There is not an
established ruleset.
In the story, the Oracle character had the ability to prophesize, that's of note
as another issue for intepretation.
One way to look at is that the Matrix is based upon technology not created by the
robots, which hijacked it but were unable to alter its fundamental nature.
Ross
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