In 1999, The Matrix arrived on scene, bringing a philosophically deep cyberpunk tale to a wide audience,

just as the internet was infecting the cultural mainstream.

It introduced audiences to Thomas Anderson, better known as Neo,

and a group of leather-clad dissidents trying to break humanity out of a computer simulation

created by a race of intelligent machines.

The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now in this very room, you can see it when

you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work. When you go to church, when you pay your taxes.

It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

It's not an understatement to say it was a hit, and some of its themes have remained in

popular discourse for the two and a half decades that have followed. The notion of living in a

simulation wasn't new. It had been a staple of science fiction for decades, but the film came out

in a moment when that possibility started to seem like something that might actually be possible

in the near future.

Computers were improving, we were all becoming digitally connected,

and the exuberance of the dot-com boom was still full steam ahead.

Almost anything seemed possible, even that we might belong to a complex simulation ourselves.

The world of the Matrix was quite clearly presented as a dystopia.

The whole plot revolves around escaping from the simulation and in the later sequels,

destroying it and the intelligent machines once and for all so humans can reclaim their

lives instead of being the batteries that power the virtual world. Yet Silicon Valley doesn't

seem to have gotten the message. Elon Musk has talked about

how he thinks we live in a simulation, and the ideology embraced by far too many in the valley

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