We can use Peter Singer’s definition of life to rather clearly show that both Wintermute and Neuromancer operate in ways that suggest they are alive. Cool beans, that’s scifi. What about “real” life? While I doubt that any sort of functional computer matrix can, at this moment, meet Singer’s definition of life (and thus, really, a very strict rule utilitarian concepetion of life), they do appear to function at the level of at least a viral organism, which scientists have long placed in a nebulous stage of alive/not alive. (And in fact, with the world’s largest virus having been discovered to contain both RNA and DNA transcription abilities, that line is now blurred to the point of being moot.)

The matrix is a sentient data structure, a network of computers interfacing as our fleshy bodies interface; we communicate, tissue system to tissue system, a giant social network built of individual cells, just as we are each giant networks of individuals cells. Turtles, cascading all the way down.

The matrix is also a dystopian fear of what this network of computer parts will become, a fear that the living will trip to alive, and then what?

The matrix is layered, practical with social. The practical the application, the technology, the social the books and scifi that feed it.

The space between us facillitates our communication. Is that space the matrix?

Oooh. How about how AI has been portrayed, from the positive to the scary negative? Damnit, so many ideas to follow, so little time to do it in…