Unit Plan: Term Three 2008 – The Matrix

Lesson One: Introduction

Introduce the idea of thinking philosophically, ethically and spiritually using contemporary media – particularly movies. Talk about their favourite movies and tease out any philosophical, ethical or spiritual themes in them. The list is endless.... If discussion lags, a ‘taste’ of science fiction in action when reviewing religious/ethical themes can be had through Isaac Asimov’s story ‘The Last Question’ or Ursula Leguin’s ‘Those Who Walk Away From Omelas’.

Resources: Asimov’s ‘The Last Question’ Ursula LeGuin’s Those Who Walk Away From Omelas

Lesson Two: Plato’s Cave

One of the strongest metaphors in The Matrix is the same as Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave. Tell the story and/or show the DVD version (if you are good at storytelling I find it better to tell it myself). TAKE IT SLOWLY and explore each stage of the story – the DVD “What is Philosophy?” from the Examined Life series does this really well.

Resources: The Examined Life, Plato’s Republic

Lesson Three:B166ER

Show Second Renaissance Part I and Second Renaissance Part II from Animatrix. Talk about machines and AI. Ethics for Machines. Terminator series of movies (and now TV series The Sarah Conner Chronicles) implies that, if we are going to consider the ethical status of thinking machines it might be imperative to do so before it happens! What do they think of B166ER’s train of thought. Talk about the end of slavery in the US and the position of minority groups in modern society (e.g. homosexuals?). Asimov’s classic I, Robot series and robot ethics. Is this any different?

Resources: Animatrix Ethics for Machines & Why Machines Need Ethics – J. Storrs Hall

Lesson Four: in-class writing task – movie review of Animatrix (attached)

Interregnum: watch ‘The Matrix’!

Lesson Five: Thomas A. Anderson

Who is Thomas Anderson? He is Thomas And-a-son. As we approach the Allegory of St. John’s Gospel reading of the movie, he is doubting Thomas, and he is the son of God (Jesus) – Thomas and- a-son. Review the scene of Neo’s ‘rebirth’ – how literal is the similarity to a baptism (particularly an immersion). What is it that Thomas (Jesus) ‘sees’ for the first time after his ‘awakening’ in the pod – he ‘sees’ the dreadful state that humanity is in – so dreadful that we don’t even realise that we’re in it! Compare this to Jesus – after his baptism (Morpheus – John the Baptist) – Neo is brought into the Nebuchadnezzar and undergoes the remainder of the awakening process – “Why do my eyes hurt?” – “Because you’ve never used them before!” The Allegory will continue in coming lessons....

Resources: The Matrix

Lesson Six: Morpheus

Morpheus as John the Baptist – the one who recognises Jesus – the one who is his herald – the one who believes (the believer side of Morpheus will be explored more in the second part of the module when we look at Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions). Review the construct fight scene. The ‘trainer’ of Jesus?

Resources: The Matrix Dialogue Vardy & Alliss article

Lesson Seven: Trinity

Love. Foreshadowing, when Trinity meets Neo for the first time face-to-face (well, in the matrix – so ‘virtual-face-to-virtual-face’) she does so with apprehension – remember that Morpheus believes that Neo is ‘The One’ – and the Oracle has already told Trinity that she will fall in love with ‘The One’. Bring up the phenomenon of online dating, online partner-seeking (currently, in the U.S., 1 in 7 couples getting married met online – that figure is expected to approach 50% within 10 years). ‘Neo’ and ‘Trinity’ do not really ‘meet’ in the physical sense until after Neo is awakened – it seems obvious that the mutual attraction begins before this. Note also the number of ‘friends’ that people in the room will have that they have never (physically) met (online games being the most notable contributor here). Are there ramifications for ‘love’ in the classic sense in worlds where a lot of social interactions are conducted in cyberspace? Are there ‘upsides”, ‘downsides’? Is the virtual world any more ‘fake’ than the ‘real’ world (Farmer wants a wife, Big Brother, other ‘reality shows’)?

Resources: The Matrix

Lesson Eight: Smith

What is the role of the agents in the movie? In our allegorical approach, whom do they represent in St. John’s Gospel? Do they have equivalents in the modern world? Review the interrogation of Morpheus by Agent Smith. What is their reaction to Smith’s ‘virus’ analogy? What happens to Smith at the end of the movie? Could Smith have become Neo’s ‘Saul/Paul’?

Resources: The Matrix

Lesson Nine: Cipher

Cipher’s Choice. Review Cipher’s meal with Agent Smith. Is ignorance bliss? Is it ever better to live in a world of illusion rather than to know the truth? Why is the truth better than illusion and, particularly in a scenario like ‘The Matrix’, how are we to know illusion from truth? Review the red pill/blue pill scene and Neo’s reaction to finding out that he has been ‘living in a dreamworld’. A philosophical approach to the question – should Neo have doubted the vision that Morpheus gave him after feeding him a dubious drug of some sort? What would they have done?

Resources: The Matrix

Lesson Ten: Oracle

Role of prophecy in the Judeo-Christian religions. Isaiah and the references to the Messiah. We will talk a lot about prophecies and the Oracle in the second module. Orpheus’ constant commitment to the prophecies of the Oracle. Who is The Oracle? Review Neo’s meeting with the prospectives (“There is no spoon”) and the Oracle’s conversation with Neo. “What am I waiting for?” “Your next life, maybe?” Temet nosce – Know thyself – inscribed (in Greek) in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi – also the sign above her door (in Latin). What does it mean and what is its significance?

Resources: The Matrix

Lesson Eleven: ‘The One’

Who is ‘The One’? Neo as Jesus – the final days, Jerusalem. Neo will have a choice – to save his own life or Morpheus’ life. Neo’s acceptance of the prophecy and his place in it. Review the final sequence where Neo dies but Trinity saves him. Neo’s death and resurrection (note that, just like Jesus, Neo actually dies and comes back rather than is rescued at the last moment). Who is Trinity? Why doesn’t Neo die? Jesus and the Resurrection – how can we understand The Resurrection. What meaning does it have for us in the modern world? Do we need to return to the question of Neo’s identity? Just who is Neo (Star Wars – a different approach – ‘the one who will bring balance to the Force’ – is it Darth Vader (Sith Lord)? Note that Annekin Skywalker dies and is resurrected – this time by The Emperor)?

Resources: The Matrix

Lesson Twelve: Watch ‘Matrix Reloaded’ (first of three lessons)

Resources: The Matrix Reloaded

Lesson Thirteen: Watch ‘Matrix Reloaded’ (second of three lessons)

Resources: The Matrix Reloaded

Lesson Fourteen: Watch ‘Matrix Reloaded’ (third of three lessons)

Resources: The Matrix Reloaded

RaVE Term Three Major Assessment Task: Animatrix review

Animatrix reviews from http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/dvd-title-a/animatrix/1008265/

Advantages Visuals, Reveals more about The Matrix, better than either film. Disadvantages Some people refuse to watch anime. A few episodes don't deliver.

When I first heard the news of an animated series based on the world of The Matrix I had a very sceptical reaction. Afterall some of the worst kids shows I've seen have been based on some of the most enjoyable Hollywood blockbusters. However the more I thought about it the more the idea started to make sense. The Matrix (at least the first one) is possibly the best live action interpretation of Japanese animation ever seen, and from the looks of the screen shots this series would follow the next logical step with a Japanese style animated series set in the world of The Matrix. More than that The Wachowski Brothers had been making some pretty lofty promises that The Animatrix would compliment the films, and videogame,in order to finally tell the entire story.

In my opinion the show succeeded at this. The first short worked to bridge the gap between the first 2 films and the game, and the rest (while a few fall short of greatness) work as a series of slick stories that explore the depths of thee matrix in a far more satisfying way than the sequels would go on to do.

1) The Final Flight Of The Osiris - You may be familiar with this episode as it was shown in theatres before the Steven King adaption Dreamcatcher. Final Flight Of The Osiris is a fantastic opening to the world of The Animatrix. Visually stunning, it represents the next step in CGI animation after the Final Fantasy movie from the same makers. You will literally be awestruck as you see these visuals though, with nothing at all being neglected. It opens with 2 characters training in a sword fight inside the training simulation, and as they fight they literally slice each others clothes off. Ahem. Just to show off the muscle details, of course. Anyway this part looks simply stunning and when they leave the simulation and you see how detailed the metal work is you're jaw will hit the floor again. The sentinels really looked like they did in the films. However Final Flight Of The Osiris was not just a visual experience. Out of all The Animatrix shorts this one had the best soundtrack that built up the tension, and brought out the horror of the sentinels in the same way as the original movie did. Plus out of all the Animatrix shorts this one had some of the best characters, due to the fact that they show emotion but their emotion is not exaggerated. Final Flight Of The Osiris is one of the most exciting Animatrix shorts. 4.5/5.

2) The Second Renaissance part 1 -The 2 Second Renaissance shorts are joint as the best Animatrix shorts available. They are the ones that, more than the rest, develop the world of the Matrix beyond the films. It's visual style is a combination of traditional cell shading and CGI and it does have a very Ghost In The Shell look to it's animation. It has no characters persay, but is more of a documentary into the history of The Matrix, and shows why it all happened. Using some absolutely shocking imagery the director shows how the machines were treated badly by humans, and visually makes similarities between the eventual fate of the machines and the Nazi holocaust. It also has a great soundtrack, but the truly great thing about this short is how it makes you question everything you thought you knew about the machines evil. 5/5

3) The Second Renaissance part 2 - Visually it uses the same style as part 1 but if that was told from the machines viewpoint, this is very much the humans viewpoint. After the humans black out the sky we see visions of the machines marching on us that are designed to be terrifying hellish images. One moment involving a robotic horseman riding over a flaming field is particularly chilling, until eventually it shows the same images from the first part but this time happening to humans instead of Machines. That's the great thing about these 2 shorts is that by telling them from opposite sides of the war they raise questions about who is good and who is evil, but leave them up to the individual to decide. Something The Matrix has never been good at before now. 5/5

4) Kids Story - The weakest of the good Animatrix shorts, Kids story is responsible for introducing everyone to that annoying kid from The Matrix Reloaded. It has a very interesting visual style which makes it a fascinating watch for the most part. It uses sketches for it's animation that just seem to fit in the story of a teenager and even help to give the feelings he has about unreality. However when the action kicks in this animation, while stylish, starts to look terrible. Unfortunately the story is what let's this one down as it's character has the kind of mind that only Matrix characters seem to develop. At one point he randomly types "Someone tell me why it feels more real when I'm dreaming" into his computer, and shows no concern over the cryptic response that he gets. More than that, when the other films came out and this kid had no important part to play in them, then this episode became pointless and its ending illogical. 3/5

5) Program - Program is one of the most visually interesting episodes of The Animatrix. The use of Black in a lot of the stems really helps to support the traditional Japanese colors of this samurai episode. It starts with a fantastic action sequence the likes of which none of the episodes can touch, in terms of uniqueness. However when the story kicks in it starts to falter. It has the same problem as the Cypher part of the plot in the original film. It has the potential to raise some amazing questions about the benefits of escaping The Matrix but ultimately decides the answers for you. The character who wants to be returned to The Matrix is not really given any human emotions except that he claims he loves the girl, and spends the whole episode trying to kill her. This fixation with anyone who wants to be plugged back into The Matrix being psychotic prevents people from asking these questions, and the twist at the end destroys any shred of dignity the theory may have had. I don't like that because I'm one of those who would rather live in the dream. 3/5

6) World Record - This is the worst of The Animatrix shorts. It just doesn't lead anywhere. The animation style is very similar to the deformed style used in the Spawn animations and it just looks plain ugly. The characters have no real strengths and the story doesn't add anything satisfying to The Matrix. From what I could make out it was saying that the runner was so determined to beat his own record that he was able to run right out of The Matrix. Either that or he ran so fast he beat The matrix. Either way the idea was done better in Kids story, and had a little more relevance to the films. The ending was ambiguous though, which was a good thing! 2/5

7) Beyond - This is an extremely good entry into the mythology of The Matrix. It deals with the subject of malfunctioning programs in the matrix causing supernatural occurrences, and so for anyone who saw it the second films plot wont seem quite so left field. However this episode deals with it in a much more satisfying way than the film did. It's not an over the top action sequence but rather a more personal human affair. It features a young woman looking for her cat, who is told by a group of youths that the cat is at the haunted house. She follows them there, where she discovers the laws of physics no longer apply and that they can do almost anything. The emotions these characters display are the most restrained emotions outside of The Final Flight Of The Osiris, and the characters never feel like they're over the top. 4/5

8) Detective Story - This is the best chapter of The Animatrix as far as visuals are concerned. It uses Black And White animation in order to give it a tense, film noire feel. It works surprisingly well in the confines of The Matrix too, as the character is hired to find a hacker named Trinity. The whole episode is told through a narrator just like the classic detective stories and even features a satisfying ending. 5/5

9) Matriculated - The final episode of The animatrix is a natural end to the series, because it offers a possible solution for the Matrix problem. However despite that interesting idea I must say that I didn't really like this episode. Visually the real world shots are OK but inside the Matrix everything gets a little to trippy for my tastes. The bright colors are just too much, especially as it comes right after the terminally dark and Bleak detective story. I didn't like the characters much either as they were unlikable and their solution was to trick the machines. They didn't want to make peace, nor did they want to reprogram the machines, they just wanted to convince the machines to accept peace in order to enslave them again. That's not my problem though because I don't mind seeing the machine as the victim again, my problem is that the machines don't look right. The Second Renaissance set up that the machines became sentinels in order to be nothing like humans, yet these runners seem somehow more human. They haven't been mentioned anywhere else in the Matrix universe and so feel out of place now that they've just been introduced as normal machines. Inside The Matrix I also picked up on a strange preoccupation with sex in this episode that was somehow supposed to help convince the robot. It didn't make sense to me. 2.5/5 RaVE Term Three major assessment task: Animatrix review

NAME: CLASS:

“Write an article for a newspaper or magazine reviewing Second Renaissance Part One and Second Renaissance Part Two. Your review should demonstrate an awareness of and reactions to the reviews of those two mini-movies in the above article. It should also include a short summary of the plots of the two mini- movies.”

Isaac Asimov: The Last euestion

The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21,2061,at a time when humanity first steppedinto the light. The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs, and it happenedthis wiy:

Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendantsof Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face - of that giant computer. ihey had at least a vague notion of general the plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a frm grasp of the whole.

Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough. So Adell and Lupov attendedthe monitrous giant only lightly and superficialiy, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answerc thut *"r" issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to sharein the glory that was Multivac's.

For decades,Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth's poor resourcescould not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing effrciency, but there was only so much of both.

But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questionsmore fundamentally, and on May 14,2061, what had been theory, became fact.

The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burnrng coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beamsof sunpower.

Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public functions, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the de-sertedunderground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. T['ey had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.

They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.

"It's amazing when you think of it," said Adell. His broad face had lines of wearinessin it, and he stined his drink slowly with a glass rod, watching the cubes of ice slur clumsily about. "All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy' if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Earth into a big drop of impure liquid iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever andlorever."

Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly becausehe had had to carry the ice and glassware."Not forever," he said.

"Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert."

"That'snot forever."

"All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Ten billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?"

Lupov put his fingers through his thinning hair as though to reassurehimself that some was still left and sipped gently at his own drink. "Ten billion years isn't forever."

"Well, it will last our time, won't it?',

"So would the coal and uranium."

"All right, but now we can hook up each individual spaceshipto the Solar Station, and it can go to pluto and back a million times without ever worrying about fuel. You can't do thit on coal and uranium. Ask Multivac, if you don't believe me.

"I don't have to ask Multivac. I know that.,'

"Then stop running down what Multivac's done for us," said Adell, blazing up, "It did all right." "who says it didn't? what I say is that a sun won't last forever. That's all I'm saying. we,re safe for ten billion years, but then what?" Lupow pointed a slightly shaky finger at the other. "And don't say we'll-switch to another sun.,,

There was silence for a while. put 'rhey Adell his glass to his lips only occasionally,and Lupov's eyes slowly closed. rested.

Then Lupov's eyes snappedopen. "You're thinking we'll switch to another sun when ours is done. aren,t vou?,, "I'm not thinking."

"Sure you are' You're weak on logic, that's the houble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got underone. He wasn't *ooiea, you see, becausehe figurei when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."

"I get it," said Adell. "Don't shout.When the sun is done,the other starswill be gone,too.,,

"Darn right they will," muttered Lupov. "It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was, and it'll all have an end when all the stars run down. some run down faster than others. Hell, the giants won,t last a hundred million years. The sun will last ten billion years and maybe the dwarfs will last two hundred uiltion for all the gooJ tn.y are' But just give us a trillion years and everything will be dark. Entropy has to increaseto maximum, that's all.,,

"I know all about entropy," said Adell, standing on his dignity.

"The hell you do."

"I know as much as you do."

"Then you know everything's got to run down somedav."

"All right. Who saysthey won't?"

"You did, you poor sap. You said we had all the energy we needed,forever. you said,forever.,

It was Adell's turn to be contrary. "Maybe we cal build things up again someday," he said. "Never."

"Why not? Someday."

"Never."

"Ask Multivac."

"You ask Multivac. I dareyou. Five dollarssays it can'tbe done."

Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessarysymbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have correspondedto this: Will mankind one day without ih" n"t expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulnesseven after it had died of old age? or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?

Multivac fell dead and silent. The slow flashing of lights ceased,the distant soundsof clicking relays ended.

Then, just as the frightened technicians felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached that portion to of Multivac. Five words were printed: INSUFFI6IENT DATA FoR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

"No bet," whispered Lupov. They left huniedly.

By next morning, the two, plagued with throbbing head and cottony mouth, had forgotten the incident. Jerrodd, Jerrodine, and Jerrodette I and II watched the starry picture in the visiplate change as the passagethrough hyperspacewas completed in its non-time lapse. At once, the even powdering of stars gave way to the predominanceof a single bright shining disk, the size of a marble, centeredon the viewing-screen.

"That's X-23," said Jerrodd confidently. His thin hands clamped tightly behind his back and the lnuckles whitened.

The little Jenodettes, both girls, had experiencedthe hyperspacepassage for the fust time in their lives and were self- conscious over the momentaq/ sensationof insideoutness.They buried their giggles and chasedone another wildly about their mother, screaming, "We've reachedX-23 -- we've reached X-23 -- we've --,'

"Quiet, children." said Jerrodine sharply. "Are you sure, Jerrodd?"

"What is there to be but sure?" asked Jenodd, glancing up at the bulge of featurelessmetal just under the ceiling. It ran the length of the room, disappearingthrough the wall at either end. It was as long as the ship.

Jerrodd scarcely lnew a thing about the thick rod of metal except that it was called a Microvac, that one asked it questions if one wished; that if one did not it still had its task of guiding the ship to a preordered destination; of feeding on energiesfrom the various Sub-galacticPower Stations;of computing the equationsfor the hyperspatialjumps.

Jerrodd and his family had only to wait and live in the comfortable residencequarters of the ship. Someonehad once told Jerrodd that the "ac" at the end of "Microvac" stood for "automatic computer" in ancient English, but he was on the edge of forgettingeven that.

Jerrodine'seyes were moist as she watched the visiplate. "I can't help it. I feel funny about leaving Earth."

"Why, for Pete's sake?" demanded Jerrodd. "We had nothing there. We'll have everything on X-23. You won't be alone. You won't be a pioneer. There are over a million people on the planet aheady. Good Lord, our great-grandchildrenwill be looking for new worlds because X-23 will be overcrowded." Then, after a reflective pause, "I tell you, it's a lucky thing the computers worked out interstellar travel the way the race is growing."

"I know, I know," said Jerrodine miserably.

JerrodetteI said promptly, "Our Microvac is the best Microvac in the world."

"I think so, too," said Jerrodd, tousling her hair.

It was a nice feeling to have a Microvac of your own and Jenodd was glad he was part of his generationand no other. In his father's youth, the only computers had been tremendous machines taking up a hundred square miles of land. There was only one to a planet. Planetary ACs they were called. They had been growing in size steadily for a thousand years and then, all at once, came refinement. In place of transistors, had come molecular valves so that even the largest Planetary AC could be put into a spaceonly half the volume of a spaceship.

Jerrodd felt uplifted, as he always did when he thought that his own personal Microvac was many times more complicated than the ancient and primitive Multivac that had fust tamed the Sun, and almost as complicated as Earth's Planetarv AC (the largest) that had fust solved the problem of hyperspatialtravel and had made trips to the starspossible.

"So many stars, so many planets," sighed Jerrodine, busy with her own thoughts. "I supposefamilies will be going out to new planets forever, the way we are now."

"Not forever," said Jerrodd, with a smile. "It will all stop someday,but not for billions of years. Many billions. Even the starsrun down, you know. Entropy must increase.

"What's entropy, daddy?" shrilled JerrodetteII.

"Entropy, little sweet, is just a word which means the amount of running-down of the universe. Everything runs down, you know, like your little walkie-talkie robot, remember?"

"Can't you just put in a new power-unit, like with my robot?"

"The stars are the power-units. dear. once they're gone, there are no more power-units."

JerrodetteI at once set up a howl. "Don't let them, daddy. Don't let the starsrun down." "Now look what you've done," whispered Jerrodine,exasperated.

"How was I to know it would frighten them?" Jenodd whispered back,

"Ask the Microvac," wailed JerrodetteI. "Ask him how to turn the stars on again."

"Go ahead," said Jerrodine. "It will quiet them down." (JerrodetteII was beginning to cry, also.)

Jerrodd shrugged. "Now, now, honeys. I'll ask Microvac. Don't worrl', he'll tell us."

He askedthe Microvac, adding quickly, "Print the answer."

Jenodd cupped the strip or thin cellufilm and said cheerfully, "See now, the Microvac says it will take care of everythrng when the time comesso don't worry."

Jerrodine said, "And now, children, it's time for bed. We'Il be in our new home soon."

Jerrodd read the words on the cellufilm again before destroying it: INSLIFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

He shruggedand looked at the visiplate. X-23 was just ahead.

VJ-23X of Lameth stared into the black depths of the three-dimensional, small-scale map of the Galaxy and said, "Are we ridiculous, I wonder in being so concernedabout the matter?"

MQ-I7J of Nicron shook his head. "I think not. You know the Galaxy will be filled in five years at the present rate of expansion."

Both seemedin their early twenties, both were tall and perfectly formed.

"Still," said VJ-23X, "I hesitateto submita pessimisticreport to the GalacticCouncil."

"I wouldn't consider any other kind of report. Stir them up a bit. We've got to stir them up."

VI-23X sighed. "Space is infinite. A hundred billion Galaxies are there for the taking. More."

"A hundred billion is not infinite and it's getting less infinite all the time. Consider! Twenty thousandyears ago, mankind first solved the problem of utilizing stellar energy, and a few centuries later, interstellar travel became possible. It took mankind a million years to fill one small world and then only fifteen thousand years to frll the rest of the Galaxy. Now the population doubles every ten yea$ --

VJ-23X intemrpted. "We can thank immortality for that."

"Very well. Immortality exists and we have to take it into account. I admit it has its seamy side, this immortality. The Galactic AC has solved many problems for us, but in solving the problem of preventing old age and death, it has undone all its other solutions."

"Yet you wouldn't want to abandonlife, I suppose."

"Not at all," snappedMQ-17J, softeningit at onceto, "Not yet. I'm by no meansold enough.How old are you?"

"Two hundred twenty-three. And you?"

"I'm still under two hundred. --But to get back 1o my point. Population doubles every ten years. Once this Galaxy is filled, we'll have filled another in ten years.Another ten years and we'll have filled two more. Another decade,four more. In a hundred years, we'll have filled a thousandGalaxies. In a thousand years, a million Galaxies. In ten thousand years, the entire known universe. Then what?"

VJ-23X said, "As a side issue, there's a problem of transportation. I wonder how many sunpower units it will take to move Galaxies of individuals from one Galaxy to the next."

"A very good point. Already, mankind consumestwo sunpower units per year." "Most of it's wasted. After all, our own Galaxy alone pours out a thousandsunpower units a year and we only use two of those."

"Granted, but even with a hundred per cent efficiency, we only stave off the end. Our energy requirements are going up in a geometric progression even faster than our population. We'll run out of energy even sooner than we run out of Galaxies.A good point. A very good point."

"We'11justhave to build new starsout of interstellargas."

"Or out of dissipated heat?" asked MQ- I 7J, sarcastically.

"There may be some way to reverseentropy. We ought to ask the Galactic AC."

VJ-23X was not really serious, but MQ-I7J pulled out his AC-contact from his pocket and placed it on the table before him.

"I've half a mind to," he said. "It's somethingthe human race will have to face someday."

He stared somberly at his small AC-contact. It was only two inches cubed and nothing in itself, but it was connected through hyperspacewith the great Galactic AC that served all mankind. Hyperspaceconsidered, it was an integral part of the GalacticAC.

MQ-l7J paused to wonder if someday in his immonal life he would get to see the Galactic AC. It was on a little world of its own, a spider webbing of force-beamsholding the matter within which surgesof submesonstook the place of the old clumsy molecular valves. Yet despite its sub-etheric workings, the Galactic AC was known to be a full thousand feet across.

MQ- I 7J asked suddenly of his AC-contact, "Can entropy ever be reversed?"

VJ-23X looked startled and said at once, "Oh, say, I didn't really mean to have you ask that."

"Why not?"

"We both know entropy can't be reversed.You can't turn smoke and ash back into a tree."

"Do you have treeson your world?" askedMQ-17J.

The sound of the Galactic AC startled them into silence. Its voice came thin and beautiful out of the small AC,contact on the desk. It said: THERE IS INSUFFICIENT DATA FoR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

VJ-23X said, "See!"

The two men thereupon returned to the question of the report they were to make to the Galactic Council.

Zee Prime's mind spanned the new Galaxy with a faint interest in the countlesstwists of stars that powdered it. He had never seen this one before. Would he ever see them all? So many of them, each with its load of humanity. --But a load that was almost a dead weight. More and more, the real essenceof men was to be found out here, in space.

Minds, not bodies! The immortal bodies remained back on the planets, in suspension over the eons. Sometimes they roused for material activity but that was growing rarer. Few new individuals were coming into existence to join the incredibly mighty throng, but what matter? There was little room in the Universe for new individuals.

Zee Prime was roused out of his reverie upon coming acrossthe wispy tendrils of another mind.

"lamZee Prime," saidZee Prime. "And you?"

"I am Dee Sub Wun. Your Galaxy?"

"We call it only the Galaxy. And you?"

"We call ours the same.All men call their Galaxy their Galaxy and nothing more. Why not?"

"True. Since all Galaxies are the same." "Not all Galaries. On one particular Galaxy the race of man must have originated. That makes it different."

Zee Prime said, "On which one?"

"I cannot say. The Universal AC would know."

"Shall we ask him? I am suddenlycurious."

Zee Prime's perceptions broadeneduntil the Galaxies themselvesshrank and becamea new, more diffuse powdering on a much larger background. So many hundreds of billions of them, all with their immortal beings, all carrying their load of intelligences with minds that drifted freely through space.And yet one of them was unique among them all in being the original Galaxy. One of them had, in its vague and distant past, a period when it was the only Galaxy populated by man.

Zee Prime was consumed with curiosity to see this Galaxy and he called out "Universal AC! On which Galaxy did mankind originate?"

The Universal AC heard, for on every world and throughout space, it had its receptors ready, and each receptor led through hyperspaceto some unknown point where the Universal AC kept itself aloof.

Zee Pnme knew of only one man whose thoughts had penetrated within sensing distance of Universal AC, and he reported only a shining globe, two feet across,difficult to see.

"But how can that be all of Universal AC?" ZeePrime had asked.

"Most of it," had been the answer, "is in hyperspace.In what form it is there I cannot imagine."

Nor could anyone, for the day had long since passed,Zee Pime knew, when any man had any part of the making of a Universal AC. Each Universal AC designed and constructedits successor.Each, during its existenceof a million years or more accumulated the necessarydata to build a better and more intricate, more capable successorin which its own store of data and individuality would be submerged.

The Universal AC intemrpted Zee Prime's wandering thoughts, not with words, but with guidance. Zee Prime's mentality was guided into the dim seaof Galaxies and one in particular enlargedinto stars.

A thought came, infinitely distant, but infinitely clear. "THIS IS THE ORIGINAI GALAXY OF MAN."

But it was the same after all, the same as any other, and Lee Prime stifled his disappointment.

uAnd Dee Sub Wun, whose mind had accompanied the other, said suddenly, is one of these stars the original star of Man?"

The UniveTsalAC said, ''MAN'S ORIGINAL STAR HAS GONE NOVA. IT IS A WHITE DWARF''

"Did the men upon it die?" asked Lee Prime, startled and without thinking.

The UNivCTsaIAC said, "A NEW WORLD, AS IN SUCH CASES WAS CONSTRUCTED FOR THEIR PHYSICAL BODIES IN TIME.''

"Yes, of course,"said ZeePrime, but a senseof loss overwhelmedhim even so. His mind releasedits hold on the original Galaxy of Man, let it spring back and lose itself among the bluned pin points. He never wanted to see it again.

Dee Sub Wun said, "What is wrong?"

"The starsare dying. The original star is dead."

"They must all die. Why not?"

"But when all energy is gone, our bodies will finally die, and you and I with them."

"It will take billions of years."

"I do not wish it to happen even after billions of years. Universal AC! How may starsbe kept from dying?"

Dee Sub Wun said in amusement,"You're asking how entropy might be reversedin direction." And the Universal AC answered: "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

Zee Prime's thoughts fled back to his own Galaxy. He gave no further thought to Dee Sub Wun, whose body might be waiting on a Galaxy a trillion light-years away, or on the star next to Zee Prime's own. It didn't matter.

Unhappily, Zee Pime began collecting rnterstellar hydrogen out of which to build a small star of his own. If the stars must somedaydie, at leastsome could yet be built.

Man considered with himself, for in a way, Man, mentally, was one. He consisted of a trillion, trillion, trillion ageless bodies, each in its place, each resting quiet and incomrptible, each cared for by perfect automatons,equally incomrptible, while the minds of all the bodies freely melted one into the other, indistinguishable.

Man said, "The Universe is dying."

Man looked about at the dimming Galaxies. The giant stars, spendthrifts,were gone long ago, back in the dimmest of the dim far past. Almost all stars were white dwarfs, fading to the end.

New stars had been built of the dust between the stars, some by natural processes,some by Man himself, and those were going, too. White dwarfs might yet be crashedtogether and of the mighty forces so released,new starsbuilt, but only one star for every thousand white dwarfs destroyed,and those would come to an end, too.

Man said, "Carefully husbanded,as directed by the Cosmic AC, the energy that is even yet left in all the Universe will last for billions of years."

"But even so," said Man, "eventually it will all come to an end. However it may be husbanded,however stretchedout, the energy once expended is gone and cannot be restored.Entropy must increaseforever to the maximum."

Man said, "Can entropy not be reversed2Let us ask the Cosmic AC."

The Cosmic AC surrounded them but not in space.Not a fragment of it was in space.It was in hlperspace and made of something that was neither matter nor energy. The question of its size and nature no longer had meaning in any terms that Man could comprehend.

"Cosmic AC," said Man, "how may entropybe reversed?"

The Cosmic AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

Man said, "Collect additionaldata."

The Cosmic AC said, 'I WILL DO S0. I HAVE BEEN DOING SO FOR A HLINDRED BILLION YEARS. MY PREDECESORS AND I HAVE BEEN ASKED THIS QUESTION MANY TIMES. ALL THE DATA I HAVE REMAINS INSUFFICIENT.

"Will there come a time," said Man, 'when data will be sufficient or is the problem insoluble in all conceivable circumstances?"

The Cosmic AC said, "NO PROBLEM IS INSOLIJBLE IN ALL CONCEIVABLE CIRCUMSTANCES."

Man said, "When will you have enough data to answer the question?"

The Cosmic AC said. "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

"Will you keep working on it?" asked Man.

The Cosmic AC said, "I WILL."

Man said, "We shall wait."

The starsand Galaxies died and snuffed out, and spacegrew black after ten trillion years of running down.

One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a sain. Man's last mind paused before fusion, looking over a spacethat included nothing but the dregs of one last dark star and nothing besidesbut incredibly thin matter, agitated randomly by the tag ends of heat wearing out, asymptotically, to the absolutezero.

Man said, "AC, is this the end? Can this chaosnot be reversedinto the Universe once more? Can that not be done?"

AC said, ''THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.''

Man's last mind fused and only AC existed -- and that in hyperspace.

Matter and energy had ended and with it spaceand time. Even AC existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never answered from the time a half-drunken computer [technician] ten trillion years before had asked the question of a computer that was to AC far less than was a man to Man.

All other questions had been answered, and until this last question was answered also, AC might not release his consciousness.

A11collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collected.

But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.

A timeless interval was spent in doing that.

And it came to pass that AC learned how to reversethe direction of entropy.

But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration-- would take care of that, too.

For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.

The consciousnessofAC encompassedall ofwhat had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.

And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"

And therewas light -- "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin from a collection called TheWind'sTuelae Quarters

With a clamour of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The ringing of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processionsmoved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and gray, grave master workmen, quief merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music and the singrng. All the processionswound towards the north side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud- stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercisedtheir restive horsesbefore the race.The horseswore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with sheamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremoniesas his own. Far off to the north and west the mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air of morning was s o clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-sold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just enough wind to make the banners that marked the racecoursesnap and flutter now and then. In the silence of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding throughout he city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetnessof the air from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells. Joyous!How is one to tell about joy? How describethe citizens of Omelas? They were not simple folk, you see,though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much any more. All smiles have becomearchaic. Given a description such as this one tends to make certain assumptions. Given a description such as this one tends to look next for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by his noble knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled slaves.But there was no king. They did not use swords, or keep slaves.They were not barbarians,I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange,the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds,noble savages,bland utopians. There were not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouragedby pedants and sophisticates,of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn deligh! to embraceviolence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. How can I tell you about the people of Omelas?They were not naive and happy children-- though their children were, in fact, huppy.They were mature, intelligent, passionateadults whose lives were not wretched.O miracle!But I wish I could describeit better.I wish I could convinceyou. Omelas sounds in my words like a city n a fatry tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhapsit would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion,for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I think that there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary,what is neither necessarynor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however--that of the unnecessarybut undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.-they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources,fuel-less power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of that it doesn't matter. As you like it. I incline to think that people from towns up and down the coast have been coming to to Omelas during the last days before the Festival on very fast little trains and double-decked trams, and that the hains station of Omelas is actually the handsomest building in town, though plainer than the magnificent Farmers' Market. But even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades,horses, bleh. One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt. But what else should there be? I thought at first there were no drugs, but that is puritanical. For those who like it, the faint insistent sweeturessof drooz may perfume the ways of the city, drooz which first brings a great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then after some hours a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions at last of the very arcane and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as exciting the pleasure of sex beyond all belief; and it is not habit-forming. For more modest tastesI think there ought to be beer. What else, what else belongs in the joyous city? The senseof victory, surely, the celebration of courage.But as we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers.The joy built upon successfulslaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial. A boundless and generous contentrnent, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendour of the world's summer: This is what swells the hears of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrateis that of life. I don't think many of them need to take drooz. Most of the processionshave reached the Green Fields by now. A marvellous smell of cooking goes forth from the red and blue tents of the provisioners. The faces of small children are amiably sticky; in the benign gray beard of a man a couple of crumbs of rich pastry are entangled. The youths and girls have mounted their horses and are beginning to group around the starting line of the course.An old woman, small, fat, and laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket, and tall young men wear her flowers in their shining hair. A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd, alone, playing on a wooden flute. People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do not speak to him, for he never ceasesplaying and never seesthem, his dark eyeswholly rapt in the sweet, thing magic of the tune. He finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden flute. As if that little private silencewere the signal, all at once a bumpet sounds from the pavilion near the star.tingline: imperious, melancholy, piercing. The horses rear on their slender legs, and some of them neigh in answer.Sober-faced, the young riders stroke the horses'necksand soothethem, whispering. "Quiet, quiet, there my beauty, my hope..." They begin to form in rank along the starting line. The crowds along the racecourseare like a field of grass and flowers in the wind. The Festival of Summer has begun. Do you believe?Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing. In a basementunder one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas,or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, second-hand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paceslong and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room, a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded.Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come, The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes,except that sometimes--thechild has no understanding of time or interval--sometimesthe door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked; the eyes disappear.The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimesspeaks. "[ will be good, " it says. "Pleaselet me out. I will be good!" They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa,eh- haa," and it speaks less and less often. It is so thin there are no calvesto its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and greasea day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores,as it sits in its own excrement continually. They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weatlers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery. This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an adult comes,or comes back, to seethe child. No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectatorsare always shocked and sickenedat the sight. They feel disgust which they had thought themselvessuperior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations.They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchangeall the goodnessand grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happinessof thousandsfor the chanceof happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed. The terms are strict and absolute;there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child. Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearlessrage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no real doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptanceof their helplessness,which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives. Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness.They know that they, Iike the child, are not free, They know compassion.It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence,that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science.It is becauseof the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there snivelitrg in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer. Now do you believe them? Are they not more credible? But there is one more thing to tell, and this is quite incredible. At times one of the adolescentgirls or boys who go see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimesalso a man or a woman much older falls silent for a day or two, then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveller must pass down village streets,between the houseswith yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seemto know where they are going, the oneswho walk away from Omelas. An excerptfrom Book VII of Plato's Republic:

"Next, then," I said. "make an image of our nature in its educationand want of education, likening it to a condition of the following kind. See human beings as though they were in an underground cave-like dwelling with its entrance,a long one, open to the light acrossthe whole width of the cave. They are in it from childhood with their legs and necks in bonds so that they are fixed, seeingonly in front of them, unable becauseof the bond to turn their heads all the way around. Their light is from a fire buming far above and behind them. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a road above, along which we see a wall. built like the partitions puppet-handlersset in front of the human beings and over which they show the puppets". "I see,"he said. "Then also seealong this wall human beings carrying all sorts of artifacts, which project above the wall, and statues of men and other animals wrought from stone,wood, and every kind of material; as is to be expected,some of the carriers utter sound while others are silent." "It's a strangeimage," he said, "and strangeprisoners you're telling of." "They're like us," I said. "For in the fnst place, do you supposesuch men would have seen anything of themselves and one another other than the shadows cast by the fne on the side of the cave facing them?" "How could they," he said, "if they had been compelled to keep their headsmotionless throughout life?" "And what about the things that are carried by? Isn't it the samewith them?" "Of course." "If they were able to discuss things with one another don't you believe they would hold that they are naming these things going by before them that they see?" "Necessarily." "And what if the prison also had an echo from the side facing them? Whenever one of the men passing by happens to utter a sound, do you supposethey would believe that anything other than the passing shadow was uttering the sound?" "No, by Zeus,"he said. "I don't." "Then most certainly," I said, "such men would hold that the truth is nothing other than the shadows of artificial things." "Most necessarily,"he said. "Now consider," I said, "what their releaseand healing from bonds and folly would be like if something of this sort were by nature to happento them. Take a man who is releasedand suddenly compelled to stand up, to turn his neck around, to walk and look up toward the lighf and who, moreover, in doing all this is in pain and, becausehe is dazzled, is unable to make out those things whose shadows he was before. What do you suppose he'd say if someonewere to tell him that before he saw silly nothings, while now, becausehe is somewhat nearer to what IS and more turned toward beings, he seesmore conectly; and, in particular, showing him each of the things that pass by, were to compel the man to answer his questionsabout what they are? Don't you supposehe'd be at a loss and believe that what was seenbefore is truer than what is now shown?" "Yes," he said, "by far." "And if he compelled him to look at the light itself, would his eyes hurt and would he flee, turning away to thos" things that he is able to make out and hold them to be really clearerthan what is being shown?" "So he would," he said. "And if," I said, "some one dragged him away from there by force along the rough, steep,upward way and didn't let him go before he had dragged him out into the light of the sun, wouldn't he be distressedand annoyed at being so dragged?And when he came to the light, wouldn't he have his eyes fi.rll of its beam and be unable to seeeven one of the things now saidto be true?" "No, he wouldn't," he said,"at leastnot right away." "Then I supposedhe'd have to get accustomed,if he were going to see what's up above. At first he'd most easily make out the shadows;and after that the phantoms of the human beings and the other things in water; and, later, the things themselves.And from there he could turn to beholding the things in heaven and heaven itself, more easily at night, looking at the light of the stars and the moon, than by day, looking at the sun and sunlight." ttOfcourse.t'...... "Now reflect on this too," I said. "If such a man were to come down again and sit in the same seat, on coming suddenly from the sun would his eyes get infected with darkness?" "Very much so," he said. "And if he once more had to compete with those perpetual prisoners in forming judgments about those shadows while his vision was still dim, before his eyes had recovered,and if the time needed for getting accustomedwere not at all short, wouldn't he be the source of laughter, and wouldn't it be said of him that he went up and came back with his eyes corrupted, and that it's not even worth trying to go up? And if they were somehow able to get their hands on and kill the man who attempts to releaseand lead up, wouldn't they kill him?" 4rvurlwMlll

By Julie Arliss and Peter Vardy

A part from the refreshing lack of aliens this not know what the truth about his world is until the trust A fitm is a regular sci-fi mowie. It is a high decision has been made. He has to Trinity and J- Ishgsl fssl-sellerbecause it is not the sort of Morpheus, and has very little reason for doing so. He film that can be watched only once. Vtrhyis this? Keanu choosesto trust becauseof the question which troubles Reevesand Lawrence Fishbourne both put in remarkable him. 'What is the truth?' It is a question that has been performances,but this doesnot fully explain its appeal. It driving him mad. But he has to be willing to be open to deals with our shared questions about reality and the..;";. new possibility without.comprehending what it is. nahre of truth. How do I know that I am not a butterfly;:*j:, heus offers Neo two pills, which represents his dreaming that I am a man/woman? These ideas are clearljg;,'J . All Morpheus promisesNeo is the truth which engaging, but the actual power and the hidden depth o$'", freedom from bondage to the Matrix. He can stay meaning for this film may come from another source; MATRIX, which is a livins death, or choosea life of most profound and spiritual of our Biblical boo$su and truth, however uncomfortable that may be. Gospel according to St At first sight no John. opening scenes of the film establish that there seemslike a radical claim. Many people will ys of seeing the world. One is to be like the perplexed wondering what it is about this fi who live from high to high. They live within they have to watch it again. Most will the MATRIX, vzhichis un-fulfilling, and numb identify with the film but not seethe most ,lo it with drugs. If they are troubled with distinctly theological of ideas that und about truth and reality they arenot really 'The MATRIX is a world that is drawn look for answers. Neo's employer is another blind you to the truth,' and this is probag,$ the onJyquestion which he seemswilling peoplewho watch it. 14t ilV is whether Neo is at his desk at 9.00am ffi.-:ie in life running an office. Thesepeople the nature of their existence and do not Neo, (Neo stands for'The New' as t theii lives are not in fact real, but part of a or neo-platonism and is an acronym for i generatedillusion. They are'dead' people,living of the film lives a double life; as a to the MATRIX. The other way of looking at prograrruner/and privately asa suppli to seeit asit reallv is. This is a much narrower :', One night he is woken as his compu h to tread. Neo's search for the truth is to him without prompting or effort and makes him unwilling to go with the to follow the white rabbit. He can called in this search to place the importance all. Then people come to the door 4'fijffi question above reason; he does not know is tattooed a white rabbit. He has thiidS lead him. He is called to trust those,Trinity or not. It is an unreasonablething i" e;;'1.{Sf-vi6itorcur"',:."] eus, who claim to know him already even going to a party and they tell him that he to'unplug' '': never met them. This goes against all which means to seek release from rea drugs .uuoiuiii ft, but he is promised the truth if he can (mescaiine) and parties. He does not go, until he trust. He is fa(ed with a decisionto go forward to re-birth seesthe white rabbit. At this point ;themessage into the real!!1$"rldor to go back to bed; he takes the red on his computer and go, or return to his bed. He goesto pill and in so d6ing turns his back on his past and any the party and here is met by TRII'JITY,who he has heard future he may have had in the working day world of the of but sayshe hasalways regarded as a'God'. Trinity is a MATRIX. It is a hugerisk, Ieavingeverything behind, but member of the resistance.She knows that humanity is he cannotbe told the truth about the MATRIX, he has to now only part of a computer generatedreality and has be shown it. Only by experiencing the truth wiil he be enteredthe world of the MATRIX to warn Neo that he is ableto graspthe true nature of the illusion. in danger.Morpheus, the leaderof the resistance,believes The film thus establishesthe differencebetween the that Neo wili be the one to savehumanity from the world known world and the real worid. That there is a greater of artificial intelligence and has been hacking into the reality beyond 'the world' is the single most important computerworld to watch him. Now that Neo is in danger theologicaltruth revealedin St John'sgospel. the resistancemust warn him, and if possiblebring him into their'real'world. BeforeNeo canenter the realworld Two Ways of Seeingthe World - St John'sGospel outsideof the MATRIX he hasto make a decision.He can "For this I comeinto the world; that you may know

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I DIALOGIIEAUSTRALIA

the truth and the truth may setyou free." (8:32) |esus when all around them have fallen by the wayside and taken offenceat The took offencebecause Some people in St |ohn's gospel are not genuinely Jesus. |ews they think that is like them and 'this seekinganswers to their questions.They are happy in their Jesus of world.' They think that they know where he has world, which they feel they understand, and they enjoy come from, the privileges of status and the com-foitsof life. Such as 'Is not thisJesus, the sonof Joseph,whose father and John presentsthem to us, are the leadersof the Jews. They mother we know?' (6:42) are stuck in a world (of rationality) governed by rational They are stuck in a two dimensional interpretation of the law (Torah). V\rJrilstthey are unwilling view of reality which seesoniy the physical.The to challengethis they are not able to grasp spiritual truths. spiritual truth which the disciplesrecognise is that is not 'of John usesthe symbol of darknessto describethis way of Jesus this world' but 'of God.' BecauseGod is the sourceof seeingthe world. To live in darknessis to turn away from all truth the discipleshave nowhere else to go,unless they that which offersthe truth. To live in darknessis to develop go backinto the dark worid of illusion u'hich a falseunderstanding of life and the world; it is to live in a does not recognise spirifual truth. The choiceto self-createdillusion. It is in fact to be dead. In the MATRIX stay with Jesusmeaas a choice 'abide' in not in the world. This however Morpheus tells Neo that the Matrix is a world that is pulled,;,;;L Jesus, makes sciples a threat to the world, over people's eyes to blind them to the truth and this preciselythe point inJohn's gospel;that theJews are 'If you were of the world, the world would love its and live in darkness,they think that tlu but because you are not of the worid...therefore the is. That means living with a false sense of realify, but t d hates you....if they persecuted me they will prefer liJe in darkness uteyou.'(15:19-20)

"the light has come into the world and s is exactly what happens to Neo in the Matrix. darkness rather than light" (3:19) t: >!-e5the truth rather than the illusory world of the Iis automatically \A4rilein darkness people cannot t"u.tft, iq+.,$. makes him a tfueat to the Matrix. without a willingness to engage with For the disciples,as for Neo, they the world for the first time as really never find a meaningful path in their livds:;! it is; a ress, deceit and death. This corresponds "II any man walk in the night he reality of the planet which Morpheus there is no light in him" (11:10) in ]ohn's gospel offers release from rld as the bringer of the light liJe Nicodemus, a leader of the Ie and the night" because he lives in dar film Neo has conquered the powers i4d is ready to reveal secure life as a Pharisee and his the truth to all purpose in life, but he knows that this and this is why he seeksJesus. rs the same double world-view as at the stage of asking the questiofi a $jzi,worla which is basedon an iliusion tum his back on his past and be shown $'o.f truth, knowledge of which can give understand the words of Tesusand upcin this highly philosophicaland deeply becausehe'loved the darknessr somekey eventsof the gospelare now In John, as in the MATRIX, seeing the world; to accept is as i truth. Seekingthe truth involvr John the Baptist to ask questions. Even Pontius functions in the MATRIX as a Tohn the asks,'What is the truth?' ,:, ter. He is himself an extraordinarv. hted man but he knows that he In John'sgospel there - is not the the worid. Those who see key figure who can transform the seethrough theillusion to thbi John the Baptist, recognisedby his is onlv onewav to the truth aili prophet, knows that he is not'the one'. to to a call to give up everything a /esus ; -'; unreasonable. The first disciples in seeJesu; the one) 'lvho is to come, or should and, without speaking, stop wha are doing and we look Matt 113 follow him. Thesefisherman withi responsibilities Inlohn's henlohn the Baptistfirst sees give up theirworking dayw urity to follow Jesus he says him, with no real grounds. risk, but where Jesusis, is a world which is without illusion. They cannor "I have seen and have borne witness that this is the enterit without being prepared for a radical changeto their Son of God" John L3a view of the world, and, unlike Nicodemus, they are Morpheus in the film also recognises Neo as the one. preparedfor this. After the feeding of the 5000many people The task of Morpheus, as of John the Baptist, is to identify no longer stayed with ]esus. ]esus turned to his disciples 'the one' and he stakes his whole life on this. and asked them,'Do you also wish to go away?'Simon John and Morpheus ate both in the service of truth, but do Peter replied on behalf of the disciples, 'Lord, to whom not themselves contain the way of truth. shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed.' (6:68)They areprepared to trust and follow

Page27 DIALOGTIEAUSTRATIA

Baptismand Re-birth Mark 9 the discipleshy, and fail to perform an exorcism, In thq film Morpheus has to put Neo through a becauseof their lack of faith. What they lack is only the painful processof re-birthing. Neo is seenbeing physically belief that they can do it; they lack the con{idencethat awoken from his computer-generatedreality and then ]esushas that evil hasno real power when facedwith the being violently unplugged from it. He is then reborn truth. The problem for the disciplesis that evil appears through water and symbolically into the light. He is born I and to be the dominate power of the world. naked and bald and when he vomits it is like a to learn that this is part of the illusion which possiting. - with faith they can move mountains.

In the gospelsJesus is pui through the water of MATRIX Neo learns from Morpheus about baptism in the river Jordan; this marks the beginning of his true powers in the computer generated his ministry. It is also the path which all who seek can enter the Matrix wherever and whenever truth must tread, and it must be chosen willingly. It is t and whilst there is not subiect to the normal path to truth, liberty and knowledge. John'sgospel ;the human bodv or to the laws of nature. In this clear in the discourse between lesus and Iesus exhibits this samefreedom to come where Nicodemus is particularly obtu disappear. In John 103ehis opponents understandthat which thereader must u t he just disappears. Neo, like Jesus life and death choice. with the powersof the'world' in inion. I-ike Neo Jesusis a threat he knowsthe truth. ..s*:ta.*cause The name of the ship used Betrayal Nebuchadnezzar - this is the na whom the people of Israel we i'in, thd'MATRIX, decidesto betray the Similarly the machines have dqes.notbelieve that Neo is the one and the human population from the 1$.,hasmis-led him. Cypher also of the Matrix (Morpheus ltoiriftirt'zone of the MATRIX where the are a slave - you were born intol od aaaS can have success,enjoyment, your mind'). The Nebuchad :curity ev€n though he knows that these exile for the few who have realt:lj.HJrdecidesto betray Morpheus to :,::::r-li;i Matrix. The machines con ihe MATRIX'jn return for re-insertion into one small city which is the a fictidnal life of fame and success. is the city of Zion. The '!ii r.' pel )esu's'disciples follow him, but also new Jersualem are obviou5]'meihw flieving-howhe will achievehis mission. Nebuchadnezzarhave to fieht betrayiJebutand in so doing decidedto Matrix on their own - yet they -Jesus was doing. Judas' motives are Zion and can draw strength iijiprecorded that he received money for l;ff-ayhave been motivated by this or he lve believed in what Jesuswas doing Those who are no gpherand Judas'betrayal is the same; wholly constrained by its whereabouts of the one thev betrav rules are part of the const! to a degree, live outsid4': bend or break the rules Neo had been told that he would degree to which they savingMorpheus' life, and dying visitsthe MATRIX his own life. When Morpheus is apparently supernat !r;,,r.roillusion that in making the tells Neo how he d orpheushe will die, but this is but orLly of the tru The reason there is iio 1S 't,' '' :;'; '. - y::: i--;1'=;;-,;,, D": of the computer generated illus em for those :- r ,'DQ prepared to lay down their -'.'.i who live outside of the MAT n they enter it ".15'd'dij g the capacityof the human it all appearsso real. In the Ml canhear, touch, r'Eaitt;' ove. The only teaching of feel, smell and fell pain. They be killed. To know ]esusin St John that it is not real is a huge which nobody before Neo has managed. If Xi,elievethis they are vulnerableto its po a

In St John's gospel Jesus is in the world, but not of the world; he knows that the world has no power over down his life for his friends' (15:13) him because, 'all things were made through him' (john 1:2). He can bend and break the lan's of nature by walking Fearof deathis a part of the world which imprisons onwater, multiplying food, healing the sick. The disciples people. Oncefear is overcomeeach can take on the worid canrot do the things he does because they lack faith. In fearlessly.

Page28 DIALOGUEAUSTRATIA

Resurrection In the MATRIX Neo dies,but becauseof the love of Trinity comes back to life. In his own self he now fully realisesthe illusory power of the MATRX. The MATRIX PLATO'S cannot harm him becausehe is not of the MATRIX. When bullets are fired at him he puts out his hand and says'No'. He is not prepared to let the MATRIX have any power over him. The bullets stop in mid-air and his triumph is STORY complete.

In the gospelJesus dies and is buried. The powers of evil and death have seemedinsurmountabie. Pontius Pilate appearsto have had the power to kill Jesusand to OF THE havetriumphed. But death hasno power over thosewho are not'of the wotld'and Jesusrises again in triumph. ]esus knew that he had to go through death but death has no dorninion over him or over those that follow him, CAVE In Religious and Values education, students will maginean undergroundchamber, like a tend to focus increasingly on the study of Ethics and the I cave with an entranceopen to the daylight Philosophyof Religion as they are made aware of these I through the Five Strandsapproach to Religiousand Values and runninga longway underground.In the education in Australia. This is good in itself as these cave are men who have been prisoners subjectsare directly reievant to contemporary life and are there since they were children,theirs legs exciting and relevant. By contrast/ many feel that the and backsbeing fastened so thatthey could gospelsare boring and irrelevant - yet thesesame people only look ahead of them and cannotturn are excited by and identify with the Matrix. There is a their heads,Behind them and abovethem lesson here; the profundity and depth of the scriptures, a fire is burning,and betweenthe fire and 'stories' the ability of these to convey ultimate truth is as the prisonersruns a road,in frontof which inescapablypowerful today as ever. Current films cannot a curtain has been built like a screen at replacescriptures but they may offer a door through which puppet the Hebrew and Christian scripture can becomeaccessible shows betweentheir operatorsand for a new generation. theiraudience.... lmagine further that there are men carryingall sorts of gear along behindthe curtainwall - all the prisoners wouldsee werethe shadowson the wall in f ront of them.... Suppose one of the prisoners were let loose, and suddenly TRUTHOR compelledto standup and turn'hishead and look and walk towardsthe fire. All these actionswould be painfuland he would be loo dazzled to see properly the objects of ILLUSION?which he used to see as shadows.So if he was told that what he usedto see was mere illusionand that he was now nearer reality Howcould one knowif the worldas we experience and seeing more correctly,because he was it is just an illusion? turned towards objects which were more real...don't you thinkhe would be at a loss Arethere any truthsthat cannot be explainedto us and thinkthat what he usedto see was more but whichwe haveto 'see'forourselves? realthan the objectsnow pointedout to him? Plato says that the task of the philosopher Whatcould prompt us to radicallychange our view is to free himself from the shacklesand of whatis realor reallysignificant in the world? shadows of illusion,to seek release from the prison of to come out into Sticksappear bent in water,the sun appearsto go the cave and roundthe earth,a mirageappears to be an oasis, the truth representedby the sun.Those who timeappears to be absolute.Light appears to travel try to do this willface mockery and ridicule in straightlines - why shouldwe trustour senses? from those who remain prisonersbut, for Plato,the philosophiclife in which truth is Can the comfortzone of conventionalthinking blind sought no matter what the cost is the only us to a searchfor any furthertruth? life worth living.

Page29 Important Arguments from DescartestMeditations

Descartesbegan his philosophical careerby trying to set forth the basic principles of the new scientific method that Galileo had introduced and which had proved so successful.At the same time he wished to show that this new scientific methodology was consistentwith Christianity and provided no threat to it. Thus, Descarteshad two main aims in the Meditations: 1. To provide a sound basis for scientific method. He aimed to show that the real sourceof scientific knowledge lay in the mind and not in the senses. 2. To show how science and religion could be compatible. He will do this by splitting the world up into two different types of substances:mind and body. Sciencewill be completely true of body, extended matter; religious truths will deal with the soul or mind. I. The Arguments for Universal Doubt: ln order to show that science rested on firm foundations and that these foundations lay in the mind and not the senses,Descartes began by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that come to us from the senses.His aim in these argumentsis not really to prove that nothing exists or that it is impossible for us to know if anything exists (he will prove that we can know external objects later), but to show that all our knowledge of these things through the sensesis open to doubt. If our scientific knowledge came to us through the senses,we could not even be sure that anything outside of us existed. The obvious implication is that, since we do know that extemal objects exist, this knowledge cannot come to us through the senses,but through the mind. Descartes uses three very similar arguments to open all our knowledge to doubt: The dream argument, the deceiving God argument, and the evil demon argument. The basis idea in each of these is that we never perceive :xternal objects directly, but only through the contentsof our own mind, the images the external objects produce in us. Since senseexperience never puts us in contact with the objects themselves,but only with mental images, sense perception provides no certainty that there is anything in the extemal world that correspondsto the images we have in our mind. Descartesintroduces dreams,a deceiving God, and an evil demon as ways of motivating this doubt in the veracity ofour senseexperience. A. The dream argument: l. I often have perceptionsvery much like the ones I usually have in sensationwhile I am dreaming. 2. There are no definite signs to distinguish dream experiencefrom waking experience. therefore, 3. It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptionsare false Descartes realizes that someone may not accept that all of the elements of our dreams may be illusory, so he introduces another mechanismto increasethe scopeof our doubt. B. The deceiving God argument: L We believe that there is an all powerful God who has createdus and who is all powerful. 2. He has it in his power to make us be deceived even about matters of mathematical knowledge which we seemto seeclearly. therefore, 3. It is possible that we are deceived even in our mathematicalknowledge of the basic structure of the world. .1orthose who would hold (as Descarteshimself will later) that God would not deceive us. Descartesintroouces an evil demon instead. C. The evil demon argument: 1. Lrstead of assuming that God is the source of our deceptions,we will assumethat there exists an evil demon, who is capable of deceiving us in the sameway we supposedGod to be able. Therefore, I have reasonto doubt the totality of what my sensestell me as well as the mathematical knowledge that it seemsI have. Since the source of our knowledge cannot lie in the sense,Descartes must find a way to rebuild the edifice of knowledge upon material he can find within the contents of his own mind. The first thing he can be sure of on the basisof this alone is his own existence. II. The argument for his existence(The "Cogito'r argument) 1. Even if we assumethat there is a deceiver, from the very fact that I am deceived it follows that I exist. 2. ln general it will follow from any state of thinking (e.g., imagining, sensing, feeling, reasoning) that I exist. While I can be deceived about the objective content of any thought,I cannot be deceived about the factthat I exist and that I seem to perceive objects with certain characteristics.(The famous statementof this from D.'s Discourse on Method is "Cogito ergo sum." or "I think, therefore I am.") 3. Since I only can be certain of the existenceof myself insofar as I am thhking, I have knowledge of my existence only as a thinking thing (res cogitans). Theological ScienceFiction: Why The Matrix Matters

by Gregory Benford

As The Matrix Reloaded sets new box office records, it gets few notices in the religious press. Yet it is a spiritual story of a quest for the true world hidden behind what we think of as the real one - and, of course, it's science fiction. This collusion of theology and science fiction is not new. The Matrix movies (with Matrix Revolutions to conclude in November) are elaboratedviews of a world dominated by artificial intelligences, which keep most of us in pods, feeding us an illusory world - this one you're sitting in - through spinal taps. Our lives are piped into our brains, complete sensory experiential Muzak. Rebels living underground in Zion (yes) are led by a mysterious guenilla figure (Morpheus, given to stentorian pronouncementsin a butterscotch voice). They unplug from the Matrix illusion amar whose hacker name is Neo. Their mission and messageis to free your mind (rememberthe '60s!) and, by the way, achievean apocalypticend to the artificial intelligences' enslavementof humanity. Morpheus plays John the Baptist to Neo's Jesus. They battle inside the Matrix against the Agents, using ultraviolence shown in spectacular slow-motion special effects. This is no messiah who redeems by suffering. Rather, as ancient Jewish texts expected, Neo is a fighting liberator. Neo has a literal calling - he reaches Morpheus first by answering a cell phone, delivered by a messengerwho says, "Hallelujah! You're my savior, man. My own personalJesus Christ!" To overcome the laminated malignancy of the Agents, Neo must learn to use his spiritual powers and focus h' mind. His training is a cyber-techno take on meditation, the traditional path to enlightenment.Visiting the Oraclc,- he asks if he is the One, and she says coyly, "Maybe next life," setting the stage. His learned skills let him deliver dazzling martial arts blows to the Agents, but he, well, lacks something: enlightenment. We get the drift when in a bold sally, Neo swoops down to save a nearly comatose Morpheus, saying "Morpheus! Get up!" echoingJesus' "Lazarus, come out!" Neo then entersthe center of Matrix power, like Jesuscleansing the Temple, fights and is shot dead. His girl friend Trinity (yes) holds the lifeless Neo, as Mary Magdalene did Jesus- and Neo comes back to life. He has saved himself, reaching deep inside - transcendentknowledge, self-enlightenment. After this self-resurrection,Neo has an unmistakable radiance.His aura dominatesthe film's frames. He manifests what St. John termed the after-resurrection "spiritual body" of Jesus.Stopping buliets with a raised hand, entering an Agent's body and exploding it, flying into the sky like Superman -- all simple, now that he has been enlightenedto his true nature. The Matrix itself is not some external evil, but rather an outcome of our own elror, our karmic payoff of past actions. Not merely illusion, it is an allusion to a founding myth of our culture. Both Matrix films carry forward this spiritual, eschatologicalstory, of the Neo new One who will return and win the last grand battle, bringing peace. A rebel named Cypher plays Judas, and they ride in a battleship called Nebuchadnezzar("we're on a mission from God") in defenseof the transcendentlast stronghold of humarity, Zion. This blend of high tech and time-deffing sciencefictional special effects seelnsto be a good example of our cultur calling forth what the postmoderniststerm "floating signifier5" - ids45 like exile from reality, and restoration of * radical newness,adrift on the Zeitgeisl and ready to be used. Science fiction grounds this in the future and thus in hope; teenagers(the Matrix core audience)will not sit still for a big-budget Biblical epic. Virtual reality you can't tell from life, downloaded worlds, malign machines- these are customary landscapesof the young, who are probably destined to live among them. The Matrix is one way for this audienceto think about a future they see more clearly than we elders do - an essentialreason that sciencefiction has been a young, brassy culture sincethe 1930s. lndeed, computers have shown us the 2D poverty of digital desserts,the postmodemist "desert of the real" (a term quoted in the films). A techno-take on radical philosophical doubt is very hip these days. It works especially if we can seethe grunge look of Zion versus the all-black MatrixMatrixMatrix look of cool dustersand plenty of leather. ln science fiction, basic doubts featured prominently in the worlds of Philip K. Dick. I knew Phil for 25 years, and he was always getting on to me, a scientist. He was a greatfan of quantum uncertainty, epistemology in science,the lot. Whether in science fiction or academicphilosophy, we lately seem bemusedby the notion that our reality may be a swindle. Computers in their flat-screen worlds help along a sensationof irreality, a liking not merely for the plausibly weird, but for the weirdly plausible. Already several Dick tales of fake realities have made it into major movies: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report. Which way would y ou vote, given a choice of a securelife in a pod illusion, or a tricky, dangerousreality? Plugged or unplugged? For worker-drones living in corporate lattices satirized in the hugely popular business comic strip Dilbert, the choice is obvious. As Freeman Dyson recently noted, "Between scienceand theology there is a genre of literature which I like to call theofiction. Theofiction adaptsthe style and conventions of science fiction to tell stories that have more to do with theologythan with science." His examples include novels of Octavia Butler (a MacArthur Grant winner), C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L'Engle, and principally, Olaf Stapledon.Their works, and the burgeoning interest in films, point to the continuing evolution of this form of philosophical fiction, with strong ties to sciencefiction. Wild thinking about religion and theology aboundsinperhaps the most unlikely quarter, modern sciencefiction. Though many think of science fiction (sciencefiction) as atheistic, Walter Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz is just one of the geme's classics that spring equally from scientific/technological and theological concems. This balanceis typical, refuting the customary materialistic chasmbetween belief and knowledge. The theofiction tradition was truly set forth in Olaf Stapledon'snovels such as Star Maker (1937), which portrays God the Scientist as an agency forever shaping his Creation to attain higher expressionsof his vision. Stapledon incorporated both biological evolution and the grander evolution of the cosmosinto a supremepantheon, ruled by a hovering Godlike presence,the Star Maker. Stapledon stood out for two reasons.His style ignored conventional characterand plot, focusing upon ideas and scope.And he spoke about the largest issueswithout a hint of conventional theology. He stood alone in his time. After World War II, though, religious sciencefiction flourished. That grand conJlict apparently forced the emerging scientific/technological culture to grasp its roots. To grapple with the implications of interplanetary flight, Ray Bradbury in "The Man" (1949) envisioned Jesuscarrying salvation to other worlds. In "The Quest for Saint Aquin" by Anthony Boucher a robot emulates St. Thomas Aquinas by logically deducing God's existence,justiffing its (and Boucher's) Catholic faith. The story has a sad, reverential tone. JamesBlish's novel A Caseof Conscience(1958) a Jesuitinfers from his faith's axiomsthat a planet is the work of the Devil. This means the ancient Manichean worldview of absolute good and evil is right; he decides the world must be destroyed.In Lester del Rey's 1954 short story, "For I Am a JealousPeople," God sides with alien invaders against us, becauseHe has given up on us as the ChosenPeople, and moved on. Reversing this, in Arthur C. Clarke's 1955 "The Star" interstellar astronautsfind a world whose star has exploded, obliterating a civilization more noble than ours. Working out the dating, they discover that it was the star of Bethlehem. Similarly insouciant,Clarke's 1953 Childhood's End depictsaliens who look like the Devil, and concludeswith an apotheosis in which humanity ascendsto a higher state of being at the hands of the same aliens. (This idea he reworked considerably into the looming black monoliths and Technicolor blowout ending of the later film 2001: A Space Odyssey.)Such imagery comes from the Jesuit priest Piene Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955),who saw scientific knowledge as key to God's plan, an upward march to transcendence. This postwar flowering of interest climaxed in Walter M. Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960), in which the Catholic church once again conveys an ancient, high culture - ours - to one that slowly emergesafter a nuclear war. Many thought this postwar effervescencecame from a crisis of faith in the face of nuclear weaponry. The film The Day the Earth Stood Slil/ best exemplifies the idea, with a mild, Christ-like alien who dies and is resurrectedby his faithful robot, finally delivering an odd message:make peace among your nations or our autonomousrobots will Jurn your world to a crisp. Peaceor else. This effervescencecrowned a sea changein science fiction's attitude toward alien religions, as well. Before World War II, stories satirized or mocked alien faiths. After it, they took a reverent view, even crediting them with truthfirl aspects,This may reflect the sudden encounterof Americans with other cultures, particularly those of Asia. Many, like Katherine Maclean's 1958 "IJnhuman Sacrifice" showed human missionaries finding that the "superstitions" harbored by aliens could tum out to be true, or at least ambiguous. Poul Anderson's "The Problem of Pain" contrastshuman vs. alien values of sacrifice, without glving either the edge. Robert A. Heinlein's pivotal 1961 Strangerin a StrangeLand powerfully made the case for new ideas in theology by portraying "a Martian named Smith" - a human strandedthere since birth, who brings to Earth Martian ideas, founding a new faith that grows quickly, with many Christ-like echoes,including a scenewhere Michael Valentine Smith's followers literally eat of his body. The new Messiah disposesof his enemies by shifting them into some other realm. The novel prefigured many of the "free love" ideas of the late 1960s,and much else; Heinlein was always aheadof the cultural curve. It also satirizes a fictional Earthly religion that seemsa combination of Mormonism and L. Ron Hubbard's vastly successful Scientology (itself a faith constructedby a science fiction writer, starting with a series of articles in a sciencefiction magazine,Astounding, in the late 1940s). I wrote with Gordon Eklund an exploration of alien theology in If the Stars Are Gods, treating an astronaut who encountersseveral life forms in the solar system, all with theological implications. The central image is aliens who journey here not to meet us, but to visit our star, which they believe is a God. The astronaut is able to share their way of perception, and so glimpses a wholly different worldview. This concem to share differing insights animatesmuch of science fiction's reaching for the "other side" - up to and including Godlike states.Star Trek in its earliest form ("classic Trek") often gave us aliens or derangedhumans who thought they were Gods becausethey had vast powers; inevitably, a Fall followed. Hubris seldom bodes well in science fiction. Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light depicted people who, cast into a primitive off-world society, used their high-tech gifts to present themselves as members of the Hindu pantheon. Such overblown confidence inevitably fails, of course,but it has a lot of fun along the way. Some approachestry to revisit great religious events,not conceptually but literally. Time travel to the crucifixion is a staple. Robert Silverberg's time traveler in Up the Line matter-of-factly finds that no matter how many tourists he escorts to the scene, the crowd never gets larger. Is this an ingenious inversion of Christ's miracle of the fishes? The story wisely doesn't say. Richard Matheson's 1954 "The Traveler" visits Calvaryto find faith. h Michael Moorcock's 1969Behold the Man and Barry Malzberg's 1982 The Cross of Fire protagonists find the opposite - there is no Christ, so they feel compelled to become Him, suffering the crucifixion as a path for their own personal redemptions. Though on the surfaceantireligious, their emotional currentsrun oppositely, creating a vortex effect. Not everybody was so reverential. Ian Watson in God's World (1979) and Ted Reynolds in The Tides of God (1989) supposethat God is not supernatural,but in fact a truly powerful alien presence.After much vexing, the only reasonablesolution is to oppose and destroy Him. The persistent science fictional posture of confronting categoriesof Godhood, and of revelation, is typical of the culture that made modern science fiction. The genre is, more than anything else, about change. Religions change too, the writers remind us. We incorporate into our mind's eye of God our current knowledge. This is inevitabl and fundamentally positive. Today science fiction has many currents. Popular writers like Orson Scott Card depict future societies much like Mormon ones, but suffused in a utopian glow. Other writers excoriate fundamentalist faiths, and satirize Theocracy. The genre is a useful antidote to certainty. It promotes a more experimental, and historically sophisticated, view of the whole range of theological thought. It especially is unafraid of spiritual insights and methods like Zen Buddhism, and often contrasts nature-centeredAsian faiths with the more axiomatic and rigid Western ones. The point of speculative ideas and science fictional treatments is not to foster propaganda (though many do so, usually too obviously and unsuccessfully), but to make us think. As a literature of change driven by technology, sciencefiction presentsreligion to a part ofthe reading public that probably seldom goes to church. Movies are another matter; The Matrix Reloaded sometimes seems like the New Testament on steroids. It also suffers from the bind of superhero epics - if Neo is unstoppable, how can there be real constraint, and so suspense? Beyond the cool violence, vinyl cat suits and dazzlingbullet-time effects, the prominently Matrix world points both toward our future and to basic theological mythologies, to spiritual meta-narratives that can appear backlit by modernscience. In this sensescience fiction is an ambassadorbetween the two most widely separatedtribes of modern thought, the scientific and the religious. Negotiations should prove profitable, but only if they are imaginative. Excerpts from'Ethics for Machines' by J. Storrs Hall

What are the ethical responsibilities of an intelligent being toward another one of a lower order? And who will be lower--us or machines? Nanotechnolosist J. Storrs Hall considers our moral duties to machines,and theirs to us.

Originally published2000 by J. Storrs Hall. Publishedon KurzweilAl.net July 5,2001.

"A robot may not injure a human being, or throughinaction, allow a human to cometo harm." --Isaac Asimov's First Law of Robotics The first book report I ever gave,to Mrs. Slatin'sfirst gradeclass in Lake, Mississippi in 1961,was on a slim volume entitled "You Will Go to the Moon". I have spentthe interveningyears thinking aboutthe future. The four decadesthat have passedhave witnessedadvances in science and physical technology that would be incredible to a child of any other era. I did see my countryman Neil Armstrong step out onto the moon. The processing power of the computers that controlled the early launches can be had today in a $5 calculator. The geneticcode has beenbroken and the messagesare being read-- and in somecases, rewritten. Jet travel,then a perquisiteof the rich, is availableto all. That young boy that I was spent time on other things besidesscience fiction. My father was a minister, and we talked (or in many cases,I was lecturedand questioned!)about good and evil, right and wrong, what were our duties to others and to ourselves. In the samefour decades,progress in the realm of ethics hasbeen modest. Almost all of it hasbeen in the expansionof inclusiveness,broadening the definition of who deservesthe sameconsideration you always gave your neighbor. I experiencedsome of this first hand as a schoolchild in '60's Mississippi.Perhaps the rejectionof wars of adventurecan alsobe counted.And yet thosevaluable advancesto the contrary notwithstanding, ethics, and its blurry reflection politics, has seemedto stand still compared to the advancesof physical science. This is particularly true if we take the twentiethcentury as a whole--it standsalone in history as the "GenocideCentury", the only time in history where governments killed their own people by the millions, not just once or in one place but repeatedly,all acrossthe globe. We can extend our vision with telescopesand microscopes,peering into the heart of the atom and seeing back to the very creation of the universe. When I was a boy, and vitally interested in dinosaurs, no one knew why they had died out. Now we do. We can map out the crater of the Chixulub meteor with sensitive gravitometers, charting the enormous structure below the ocean floor. Up to now, we haven't had, or really needed,similar advancesin "ethical instrumentation". The terms of the subjecthaven't changed. Morality restson human shoulders,and if machines changed the easewith which things were done, they did not changeresponsibility for doing them. People have alwaysbeen the only "moral agents". Similarly, people are largely the objects of responsibility.There is a developingdebate over our responsibilities to other living creatures, or species of them, which is unresolved in detail, and which will bear further discussion below. We have never, however, consideredourselves to have *moral* dutiesto our machines, or them to us. All that is aboutto change. What Are Machines, Anyway? We have a naive notion of a machine as a box with motors, gears, and whatnot in it. The most important machine of the industrial revolution was the rt"u- engine, providing power to factories,locomotives, and ships. If we retain this notion, however, we will fall far short of an intuition capableof dealingwith the machinesof the future. The most important machine of the twentieth century wasn't a physical thing at all. It was the Turing Machine, and it was a mathematicalidea. It provided the thioretical basis for computers. Furthermore, it established the principle that for higher functions such as computation, it didn,t matter what the physical realization was (within certain bounds)--anycomputer could do what any other computer could, given enoughmemory and time. This theoretical concept of a machine as a pattern of operationswhich could be implemented in a number of ways is called a virfual machine. In modern computer technology, virhral machines abound. Successive versions of processor chips re-implement the virtual machines of their predecessors'so that the old software will still run. Operating systems (e.g. Windows) offer virtual machines to applications programs. web browsers offer ievlral virtual machines (notably Java) to the writers of Web pages. More importantly' program any running on a computer is a virtual machine. Usagein this senseis a slight extension of that in computer science,where the "machine" in "virtual machine', refersto a computer, specifically an instructionset processor.Strictly speaking,computer scientistsshould refer to "virhral processors", but they tend to refer to processorsas "machines', anyway. For the purposesof our discussionhere, we can call any program a virhral machine. In fact, i wiif drop the "virhJal" and call programs simply "machines'. Th; essenceof a machine, for our purposes,ls its behavior; what it does given what it senses(always assuming that there is a physicai realization capableof actuallydoing the actions). To just understand how complex the issue really is, let's considera huge, complex, immensely powerful machine we've alreadybuilt. The machine is the U.S. Government and legal system. [t is a lot more like a giant computer program than people realize.Really compl-x computer programs are not sequences of instructions;they are setsof rules. This is explicii in the caseof "expert systems" and implicit in the case of distributed, object-oriente-cl,intemrpt-driven, networked software systems. More to the point, sets of rules are programs--in our terms, machines. Of courseyou *just* will say that the government isn't a program; it's under human control, isn,t it, and it's composed of people to begin with. It is composedof people,but the whole point of the rules is to make these people do different things, or do things iifferently, than they would have otherwise. Indeed in many casesa person's whole function in ttre bureaucracyis to be a sensor or effector; once the sensor-person does their function of recognizing a situation in the "if, part of a rule (what lawyers call "the facts"), the system, not the person,decides what to do aboui it ("the law")' Bureaucraciesfamously exhibit the samelack of common senseas do computer programs. From a moral standpoint, it is important to note that those governments in theiwentGth century which were most evil, murdering millions of people, were autocraciesunder the control of individual humans such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao; and that governments which were more autonomousmachines, such as the liberal Westerndemocracies, *ire significantly less evil. Ua to now, the applicationof ethics to machines,including programs, has been that the actions of the machine were the responsibility of the designer and/or operator. ln future, however, it seems clear that we are going to have machines, like the government, whose behavior is an emergent and to some extent unforeseeableresult of design and operationdecisions made by many people and ultimately by other machines. The Road Ahead "You'rea better man than I am, GungaDin." --Kipling Robots evolve much faster than biological animals. They are designed, and the designs evolve memetically. Given that there is a substantialniche for nearly autonomouscreatures whose acts are coordinatedby a moral sense,it seemslikely that ultimately robots with conscienceswould appear and thrive. We have in the past been so complacent in our direct control of our machines that we have not thought to build them with consciences(visionaries like Asimov to the contrary notwithstanding). We may be on the cusp of a crisis as virhral machines such as corporations grow in power but not in moral wisdom. Part of the problem, of course,is that we do not really have a solid understanding of our own moral natures. If our moral instinct is indeed like that for language, note that computer language understandinghas been one of the hardestproblerns, with a 50-yearhistory of slow, frustrating, progress. Also note that in comparisonthere has been virtually no research in machine ethics at all. For our own sake it seems imperative for us to begin to understand our own moral sensesat a detailed and technical enough level that we can build their like into our machines. Once the machines are as smart as we are, they will seeboth the need and the inevitability of morality among intelligent-but-not-omniscient nearly autonomouscreatures, and thank us rather than merely trytng to circumvent the strictures of their consciences. Why shouldn't we just let them evolve conscienceson their own (AI's and corporations alike)? If the theory is right, they will, over the long run. But what that means is that there will be many societiesof AI's, and that most of them will die off becausetheir poor proto-ethics made them waste too much of their time fighting each other (as corporations seem to do now!), and slowly, after the rise and fall of many civilizations, the ones who have randomly accumulatedthe basis of sound moral behavior will prosper. Personally I don't want to wait. And any AI at least as smart as we are should be able to grasp the samelogic and realize that a conscience is not such a bad thing to have. (By the way, the same thing applies to humans when, as seemsnot unlikely in the future, we get the capabilityto edit our own biological natures. It would be well for us to have a sound,scientific understandingof ethics for our own good as a species.) There has always been a vein of Frankenphobiain science fiction and futuristic thought, either direct, as in Shelley, or referred to, as in Asimov. It is clear, in my view, that such a fear is eminently justified against the prospect of building machines more powerful than we are, without consciences.Indeed, on the face of it, building superhumansociopaths is a blatantly stupid thing to do. Suppose,instead, we can build (or become) machines that can not only run faster, jump higher, dive deeper,and come up drier than we can, but have moral sensessimilarly more capable?Beings that can see right and wrong through the political garbagedump of our legal system; corporations one would like to have as a friend (or would let ones daughter marry); governments less likely to lie than your neighboris. I could argue at length (but will not, here) that a society including superethicalmachines would not only be better for people to live in, but strongerand more dynamic than ours is today. What is more, not only ethical evolution but most of the classical ethical theories, if warped to admit the possibility, (and of coursethe religions!) seemto allow the conclusionthat having creaturesboth wiser *and morally superior* to humansmight just be a good idea. The inescapableconclusion is that not only shouldwe give consciencesto our machines where we can, but if we can indeed create machines that exceed us in the moral as well as the intellectual dimensions, we are bound to do so. It is our duty. If we have any duty to the future at all, to give our children sound bodies and educated minds, to preserve history, the arts, science, and knowledge, the Earth's biosphere, "to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity"--to promote any of the things we value--those things are better cared for by, *more valued by*, our moral superiors whom we have this opportunity to bring into being. It is the height of arroganceto assumethat we are the final word in goodness.Our machines will be better than us, and we will be better for having createdthem. Why Machines Need Ethics from 'Ethics for Machines' (c) 2000 J. StorrsHall, PhD. at http://discuss.foresi ght.ore/-j osh/ethics.html

Moore's Law is a rule of thumb regarding computer technology which, in one general formulation, statesthat the processingpower per price of computerswill increaseby a factor of 1.5 every year. This rule of thumb has held true from 1950 through 2000. The factor of a billion improvementin bang-for-a-buck of computersover the period is nearly unprecedentedin technology. Among its other effects, this explosion of processingpower, along with the internet, has made the computera tool for scienceof a kind never seenbefore. It is, in a sense,a powered imagination. Scienceas we know it was basedon the previous technology revolution in information, the printing press.The spreadof knowledgeit enabled,together with the preciseimagining ability given by the calculus, gave us the scientific revolution in the seventeenthand eighteenthcenturies. That in turn gave us the industrial revolution in the nineteenthand twentieth. The computer and intemet are the calculus and printing press of our day. Our new scientific revolution is going on even as we speak. The industrial revolution to follow hasn't happened yet, but by all accounts it is coming, and well within the twenty-first century, such is the accelerated pacemodern technology makes possible. The new industrial revolution of physical production is sometimesreferred to as nanotechnology. On our computers,we can alreadysimulate the tiny machineswe will build. They have someof the "magic" of life, which is after all basedon molecularmachines itself. They will, if desired,be able to producemore of themselves.They will producestronger materials, more reliable, longer-lasting machines, more powerful motors which are utterly silent, and last but not least, much more powerful computers. None of this should come as a surprise. If you extend the trend lines for Moore's Law, in a few decadespart sizes are expectedto be molecular and the price-perfornance ratios imply something like the molecular manufacturing schemesthat nanotechnologistshave proposed. If you project the trend line for power-to weight ratio of engines, which has held steady since 1850 going through several different technologies from steam to jet engines,it says we have molecular power plants in the 2030 -205 0 timeframe. The result of this is essentially a reprise of the original industrial revolution, a great flowering of increasedproductivity and capabilities,and a concomitantdecrease in costs. ln general,we can expect the costs of "hi-tech" manufactureditems to follow a downward track as computers have. One interesting corollary is that we will have affordable robots. Robots today are much more prevalent than people may realize. Your car and your computer were likely partially made by robots. Industrial robots are hugely expensivemachines that must operate in a carefully planned and controlled environment, becausethey have very limited sensesand no common sensewhatsoever. With nanotechnology, that changes drastically. lndeed, it's already starting to change, as the precursortechnologies such as micromachinesbegin to have their effect. Existing robots are often stupider than insects.As computersincrease in power, however, they will get smarter, more able to operate in unstructured environments, and ultimately be able to do anything a human can. Robots will find increasing use, as costs come down, in production, in serviceindustries, and as domesticservants. Meanwhile, because non-mobile computers are already more plentiful and will be cheaper than robotsfor the sameprocessing power, stationarycomputers as smartas humanswill probably arrive a bit soonerthan human-levelrobots. [see Kurzweil, Moravec] Before we proceed let's briefly touch on what philosophers sometimes call the problem of other minds. I know I'm conscious,but how do I know that you are -- you might just be like an unfeeling machine, a zombie, producing those reactionsby mechanicalmeans. After all, there have been some cultures where the standard belief among men was that women were not conscious (and probably vice versa!). If we're not sure about other people, how can we say that an intelligent computer would be conscious? This is important to our discussion becausethere is a tendency for people to set a dividing line for ethics between the conscious and the non-conscious.This can be seen in formal philosophical treatment as far back as Adam Smith's theory of ethics as based in sympathy. If we can't imagine something as being able to feel a hurt, we have less compunctionsabout hurting it, for example. The short answer is that it doesn't matter. fsee Dennet, "lntentional Stance"] The clear trend in ethics is for a growing inclusivity in those things consideredto have rights -- races of people, animals, ecosystems.There is no hint, for example, that plants are conscious,either individually or as species,but that doesnot, in and of itself, precludea possiblemoral duty to them, at leastspecies of them. A possibly longer answer is that the infuitions of somepeople (Berkeley philosopherJohn Searle, for example) that machines cannot "really" be consciousare not based on any real experiencewith intelligent machines, and that the vast majority of people interacting with a machine that could, say, pass the unrestricted Turing Test, would be perfectly willing to grant it consciousnessas they do for other people. And until we are able to say with a great deal more certainty than we now can, just what consciousnessis, we're much better off treating somethingthat acts consciousas if it is. Now: if a computer was as smart as a person, able to hold long conversationsthat really convinced you that it understood what you were saying, could read, explain, and compose poetry and music, and could write heart-wrenching stories, as well as make new scientific discoveries and invent marvellous gadgetsthat were extremely useful in your daily life -- would it be murder to turn it off? What if instead it weren't really all that bright, but exhibited undeniably the full range of emotions, quirks, likes and dislikes, and so forth that make up an averagehuman? What if it were only capableof a few tasks,say with the mental level of a dog, but also displayed the samedevotion, and evinced the samepain when hurt -- would it be cruel to beat it, or would that be nothing more than banging pieces of metal together? What are the ethical responsibilities of an intelligent being towards anotherone of a lower order? These are crucial questions for us, for not too long after there are computersas intelligent as we are, there will be ones that are much more so. *We* will all too soon be the lower-order creatures.It will behoove us to have taught them well their responsibilitiestoward us. However, it is not a good idea simply to put specific instructions into their basic programming that force them to treat us as a special case.They are, after all, smarterthan we are. Any loopholes, any reinterpretation possible, any reprogramming necessary,and special-caseinstructions are gone with the snows of yesteryear.No, it will be necessaryto give our robots a sound basis for a true, valid, universal ethics that will be as valuableto them as it is for us. After all. thev will in all likelihood want to createtheir own smarter robots... Tin Men

Japanese engineers are creating a race of obedient machines for the masses BY CHARLESS. LEE/TOKYO

From Time: Asia magazine'swebsite at http://www.time.com/time/asia/

At a diminutive 1.2 meters tall, it looks like a child wearing a spacesuitand walks with a deceptively natural gait that belies the whir of gears and motors emanating from its hard plastic body. Reacting to a person enteringthe lobby of Honda Motor Co.'s Wako ResearchCenter just outside of Tokyo, the robot advances toward the reception desk, stops, bows and says in a prepubescentboy's voice: "Welcome to the Honda R. and D. centre.My name is ASIMO." When the visitor offers to shakehands, ASIIVIO extendsa mechanicalhand in response.Then, on cue from a Honda employee,the robot wavesand emits a chirpy "bye-bye."

Cute. But is this bucket of bolts smart enoughto get me a beer? To Masato Hirose, senior chief engineerat the Honda lab, this is not a facetiousquestion. Since 1986,Honda researchers have been trying to build a robot that could balanceand walk naturally like a human. With ASIMO (short for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility), mission accomplished.Now they are moving on to the next epochal challenge: creating a generation of humanoid machines that boast the kind of butlering skills of classic sciencefiction robots. "Imagine a machine that's as versatile as a human but that works 24 hours a day and does all the householdchores," gushes Hirose. "You can'treally attacha price tag to what it offers."

A lot of people would like to. Thanks to advancingcomputer technology and falling semiconductor prices, companies are starting to dream they might be able to make money selling robots to the masses.In addition to Honda's experimentalprogram, Japaneseelectronics giants Sony, Matsushita and Sanyo are all developing "personal robots" they hope will some day become as ubiquitous as televisions and at least as companionable as accountants.Sony engineers say the business stands where the personal computer industry stood in the early 1980s, when many doubted whether desktopmachines would ever be more than expensiveplaythings. "PCs are a pretty good business now," says Tatsuzo Ishida, who headsproduct development at Sony's entertainmentrobot division. "Maybe in l0 to 20 yearc,robots will becomelike PCs."

Plenty of Japanesesee a domestic market emerging. According to the Japan Robot Association (an organization currently run by humans),the country'spersonal-robot market could grow to $8 billion by 2010 from almost nothing today. That projection is basedpartly on wishful thinking, partly on demographictrends. Japan'srapidly aglng population and shrinking workforce is expectedto create a growing need for personal assistantsand low-level health care workers that machinesmight fill.

ASIMO was designedwith that in mind, saysHirose. The robot is light (52 kilos), lest it stumble and pin a user to the floor, triggering a product-liability lawsuit. Yet it's tall enough to reach light switches and doorknobs or to clear the table. Its mini-cam "eyes" are level with those of a sitting adult for easy communication, and its humanlike form is meant to break down our inhibitions toward sharing a home with a talking toaster.

Sadly, ASIMO is not for sale. Honda, which has built 20 ASIMOs, won't say how much it cost to develop, but the firm is putting them to tentative commercial use as a public relations gimmick. Honda is renting ASIMOs to four companies, including IBM Japan and a science museum in Tokyo, for receptionduties at the circuit-scramblingprice of $163,000a year. Indeed, there's a gaping cost-benefit gulf to be bridged before Honda's little walking man can evolve into the next Walkman. Consumershave been conditioned to expect robots to behave like C- 3PO of Star Wars. But creating artificially intelligent machinesthat can senseand interact with the environment in a convincing way is a monumentally complex computing task. The Japanese goverlment's Humanoid Robotics Project set out five years ago to deliver a robot versatile enough to perform hard labour inhazardous conditions. Some $40 million has been spent but the project's HRP-I robot still suffers from poor visual recognition and has trouble walking on rough terrain. Likewise, ASIMO understandsonly the simplest of commandsand isn't dexterous enough to wield a mop. Yet it costs more to lease than a Lamborghini. "We want to improve ASIMO to make it marketable as soon as possible. But it's not at a stage where we can draft a business strategy," admits Honda spokesmanYuji Hatano.

Rival companies are racing to build more specializedmachines. Matsushita, maker of the Panasonic brand, has developed a vacuum-cleaningdroid with powerful dust sensors,while Sanyo is working to commercialise a remote-controlled guard dog equipped with a digital camera and mobile phone. Sony has taken a slightly different approach.While Honda researcherspursue the holy grail of the film Bicentennial Man-a mechanizedbutler-Sony's vision is closer to the sci-fi movie A.I., which features a boy-bot that offers unconditional robot lovin'. The company has sold more than 100,000of its toylike AIBOs sincethe robo-dogwas introducedthree years ago, at an averageprice of $1,500 each. "I see robots in consumers'homesas their personalpals," says SatoshiAmagai, chief of Sony's robot division. "They will talk to you, sing to you, remind you of things and will help you live more effectively."

Sony declines to say if AIBO (which means "partner" in Japanese)has proved profitable. But there seemsto be real dernandfor robot pets,judging by the AIBO owners clubs springing up in the U.S. and Japan. Sayuri Toba, a thirtysomething medical clerk in Tokyo, says she and her husband splurged on an AIBO named Hal two years ago. She looks back nostalgically on Hal's first day as a memberof the family: "I was so happy. I felt like I was looking at a new being." She still plays with Hal every day after work-it can chase a ball, grasps dozens of simple remote-controlled commands and its software allows it to "mature" over time, behaving less and less like a puppy. On some weekends,Toba organizesmeetings of AIBO owners so their plastic pets can play together. "I know it doesn'thave consciousness,"she says."But I love my AIBO. and I want to believe that he lovesme, too."

Playing on these yeamings, Sony is now working on the SDR-4X, a gnome-sizedhumanoid bot that can sing, dance, kick a ball-and chat. The company plans to equip the device with a 60,000-word vocabulary and the ability to recognize l0 human faces and voices. The SDR-4X could hit the market as early as next year, but it will cost a good chunk of an annual salary. Sony doesn't expect to sell many. The SDR-4X "is a symbolic product,"Amagai concedes.

In fact, the considerable progress made recently has only underscored how far researchersand engineers are from their goal. Kazuo Tanie, a respected robot researcher and top government adviser, says the technology remains too difficult for any single company to master alone, and the businesswould ripen more quickly if there were less competitionand more pooling of resources. Manufacturers, however, hate the idea of cooperation. After all, Honda's and Sony's corporate images are burnished by their keen machines-they demonstrate technological superiority over rivals. Even if it can'tdo the dishes,as a walking billboard ASIMO doesjust fine.