To what extent do The Matrix and Hayles’ concept of pattern vs presence correlate?
For this essay I am going to close read a section of Chapter 2, Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers from N. Katherine Hayles' book How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. I will then apply her concepts to similar ideas and themes from the 1999 movie The Matrix directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski. The main interest and purpose of doing this is to see how both works correlate in terms of their conceptions and, due to both works being originally released to the public in 1999, also to see how prescient they were in terms of those ideas today. The section I am going to close read mainly concerns Hayles' conception of pattern vs presence. While Hayles makes the definitions of these two words clear in her writing I want to state them again here at the start along with some of my own definitions for the purposes of my comparison. Definitions Pattern - computer code, cyberspace as the internet, social media Presence - corpo...