Animatrix the Second Renaissance [Part 2]

One of my favourite parts of the Animatrix, highly recommend this! The Animatrix (アニマトリックス animatorikkusu) is a 2003 direct-to-video anthology film based on The Matrix trilogy. The film is a compilation of nine animated short films.




Explained throughout by a computerized narrator known as the Instructor (Julia Fletcher), the film begins with an introduction to the Zion Archive and the access of "Historical File 12 -- 1", "The Second Renaissance". The screen opens to the image of an immense megacity, in the late 21st century, wherein the vast human population is supported by a multitude of artificially intelligent machines. The machines are built in humanoid form and seem to be treated as slaves, employed in a variety of positions ranging from domestic servants to laborers on massive construction projects.
"In the beginning, there was man. And for a time, it was good. But humanity's so-called civil societies soon fell victim to vanity and corruption. Then man made the machine in his own likeness. Thus did man become the architect of his own demise."
With increasing numbers of people released from all labor, the human population has become lazy, arrogant, and corrupt. Despite this, the machines were content with serving humanity and, as the narrator states, "for a time, it [the status quo] was good". This phrase is a reference to one of the most famous phrases of Genesis, consistent with the Biblical references seen throughout the original Matrix films, and is one of numerous references to Genesis in particular present in "Second Renaissance".
The relationship between humans and machines changes in the year 2090, when a domestic android is threatened by its owner. The android, named B1-66ER in what appears to be a reference to the character Bigger Thomas from the novel Native Son, then kills the owner, his pets, and a mechanic instructed to deactivate the robot. This murder is the first incident of an artificially intelligent machine killing a human. B1-66ER is arrested and put on trial, but justifies the crime as self-defense, stating that it "simply did not want to die". During the trial scene, there is a voice-over of Clarence Darrow (the defense attorney) quoting a famous line from the Dred Scott v. Sandford case in 1856 in his closing statement, which implicitly ruled that African Americans were not entitled to citizenship under United States law. Using this as a precedent, the prosecution argues that machines are not entitled to the same rights as human beings, and specifically that human beings have a right to destroy their property, while the defense urges the listener not to repeat history, and to judge B1-66ER as a human and not a machine (a longer version of Darrow's closing statement can be read in the comic Bits and Pieces of Information from The Matrix Comics Volume 1).
"We think they are not, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings..."
B1-66ER loses the court case and is destroyed. Across the industrialized world, mass civil disturbances erupt when robots and their human sympathizers rise in protest. World leaders fear a robot rebellion, and governments across the planet initiate a major program to destroy all humanoid machines. News reports show rioting in American and Western European cities such as Chicago and Berlin, alongside the peaceful "Million Machine March" on the Albany district courthouse where B1-66ER was sentenced. Visual references are made to such incidents as General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan's execution of Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém, the Tank Man standoff following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the Al-Aqsa Intifada and The Holocaust.
Some robots escape destruction when humans, in their greed, still want the robots to work and produce things for them. The machine population is exiled, and they create their own nation in the Middle East, named Zero One (or "01", the numerals used in binary notation). According to the narrator, the robots built Zero One in "the cradle of human civilization", an allusion to the Fertile Crescent, apparently located in Saudi Arabia's "Empty Quarter" which is devoid of human life. Essentially ghettoized at Zero One, the machines establish their own industrial base there and begin to produce efficient, highly advanced artificial intelligence, echoing Vernor Vinge's thoughts on a technological singularity...

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Part 2 Animatrix
• second renaissance
• machine
• technology
• singularity

[dbellinasr]

I'm never buying an iPhone. 

[MegaParker555]

@Iridium237

First off, this is fiction. I believe the authors said the machines were deeply fascinated with the human mind, the Matrix was meant for physical/virtual AI to thrive alongside humans. They didn't want mankind extinct. Also, the humans blocked out the Sun so the machines couldn't use solar power. The EMP they use later on was on a very small scale when they did raids, not against entire machine armies, hence the appearence of 'success'.

[severrnijKGU]

im interested to hear a reply to this. if you had kids and the choice of order in which to introduce them to this entire series, would you show them the animatrix first?

[MoppyPuppy]

@Iridium237

EMP generators probably came in the latter stages of the war.

"HEY GUYS, I JUST INVENTED A WEAPON THAT CREATES SMALL SCALE EMP BLASTS WITHOUT THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS!"

"Quick, notify the world leaders that we have a solution!"

(7:02)

[MoppyPuppy]

@junkers1337

No one ever has contingency plans for when your enemy unexpectedly abandons its humanoid forms to skyscraper sized energy sucking insectoid creatures that spawn continuously from human flesh powered floating factories that bombard fixed defenses with never ending amounts of high explosive death lasers.

[junkers1337]

I'm just amazed at the fact that the top leaders did not attempt a back up plan. Bases on the Moon and Mars considering the technology they had.

[MRKetter81]

@Iridium237 It's art... It's only meant to make you think. Quite honestly I think what robots would do to the economy alone would be enough to destroy society.

Could you imagine trying to get a job when every single place you look for a job has a machine doing the work that would normally make you worth hiring? It's already happening..

Artificial Intelligence is only as artificial as the one projecting it. I think we'll destroy our selves with machines long before the machines do.

[RoyhotBoy9]

how hard is to take down one of those ballons...?

[MrLuizzuc]

If I were there I would suggest an EMP strike.

[Iridium237]

This makes no sense now that I have taken rudimentary engineering courses. If EMP works so well later, why is that not the only weapon they ever need? Why would the machines need humans why they could easily use nuclear power forever? It would have made more sense for the machines to have been the ones to blot out the sun and turn the earth cold. Then they would have looked like the good guys, who graciously gave man a home in the matrix and kept him safe and warm in those nice little wombs.