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 - corporeality, flesh, a human being

With these definitions in place I will now begin the close reading starting with a quote from Hayles: “The contrast between the body’s limitations and cyberspace’s power highlights the advantages of pattern over presence.” (Hayles) In The Matrix we see how as long as the computer program in the film (known as the matrix) endures the sentient robots that created it are able to enslave others (in this case humans). Those humans that are enslaved (almost all) are entirely disconnected from their physical presence being as they are effectively in a coma while connected to the matrix. Only the mind is active in the computer program. Ignoring the enslavement aspect Hayles describes such a situation where: “physical forms can recover their pristine purity by being reconstituted as informational patterns in multi-dimensional computer space.” (Hayles)

Hayles also states that “A cyberspace body, like a cyberspace landscape, is immune to blight and corruption.” (Hayles) This is not the case in The Matrix. In the film we see that if the life or mind of the human body ‘dies’ in the matrix this also affects the physical comatose body to the point where it will die and has to be removed by the machines from its connection to the matrix and be disposed.

In the next paragraph Hayles quotes a section of Gibson’s Neuromancer which talks about “data made flesh”. That “Information is the putative origin, physicality the derivative manifestation.” (Hayles) There is a reversal here from how we are used to thinking that is also mirrored in The Matrix. Hayles seems to be saying that in terms of a chicken or egg argument, data or information is the origin and physicality the derivative. She says: “If flesh is data incarnate, why not go back to the source and leave the perils of physicality behind?” (Hayles) In The Matrix the physical body is inert, plugged into a computer program so that this prophetization has come true. The human mind is operable but only as data signals interpreted by an intermediary device (the matrix). While in the film the physical body is not immune to peril it may as well be until such time as a significantly catastrophic event in the matrix occurs for the physical body to then also be affected.

Hayles then goes on to describe the conception within cybernetics of “humans, animals, and machines as information-processing devices receiving and transmitting signals to effect goal-directed behaviour.” (Hayles) Together with this conception she adds a literary innovation from Gibson, that of point of view or pov, so that subjectivity can also be articulated along with the goal-directed data signals. She states that “More than an acronym, pov is a substantive noun that constitutes the character’s subjectivity by serving as a positional marker substituting for his absent body.” (Hayles)

The Matrix also broaches this subject when Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne) is explaining to Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) what the matrix is. Morpheus explains how when Neo is in the matrix his look is defined by his “residual self image” (2) and that it is the “mental projection of [his] digital self”. (2) "Instead of what Neo really looks like we see a projection from Neo’s mind of what he believes he should look like." (Read) "It is possible to relate Morpheus's mental projection line with how we present ourselves on social media. If you reverse the wording so that it reads 'the digital projection of your mental self' then we have an accurate description of most peoples' social media expression." (Read)

Hayles then describes author Henry James's conception of point of view. She quotes a section from the preface of his book The Portrait of a Lady (1881), in which James "imagines a "house of fiction" with a "million windows" formed by "the need of the individual vision and by the pressure of the individual will."" (Hayles) James is cited by Hayles as an authority on point of view up until the invention of cyberspace. She describes how in "its usual Jamesian sense, point of view presumes the fiction of a person who observes the action from a particular angle and tells what he sees." (Hayles) Hayles sets out how up until the invention of cyberspace "the observer is an embodied creature, and the specificity of his or her location determines what the observer can see when looking out on a scene that itself is physically specific." (Hayles) She adds that "When an omniscient viewpoint is used, the limitations of the narrator's corporeality begin to fade away, but the suggestion of embodiment lingers in the idea of focus, the "scene" created by the eyes movement." (Hayles) In much the same way, as I type out the quotes in this paragraph from Hayles's text, I am in control and trying to make sense of them by reordering their original use in Hayles's writing. The sense of myself as omniscient narrator is there while you read this. What happens though once I have finished writing this and it is read by my tutor? The point of view alters yet it is still focalised through the nature of what it is. An essay written by a student to be marked by a teacher. The point of view is, as Hayles stated, an embodied creature at each juncture.

In The Matrix, as previously described, point of view of the protagonists while they are plugged into the matrix takes the form of Gibson's conception of pov. If we presuppose that the matrix is the equivalent of cyberspace or the internet then, when applying Hayles' theory, if I were to publish my essay on the internet the embodiment aspect is removed. This is the part of her theory I find difficult to agree with especially through the context of how cyberspace or the internet is as we know it today. What is the difference between my essay or any text when published as a physical book or paper in comparison to one which is available on the internet? She says that "Even for James, vision is not unmediated technologically. Significantly, he hovers between eye and field glass as the receptor constituting vision." (Hayles) In the next sentence though she states "Cyberspace represents a quantum leap forward into the technological construction of vision." Her key definition from the text of this quantum leap forward is as follows: "Instead of an embodied consciousness looking through the window at a scene, consciousness moves through the screen to become the pov, leaving behind the body as an unoccupied shell. In cyberspace, point of view does not emanate from the character; rather, the pov literally is the character." (Hayles) While in The Matrix we see this is also true, the physical body being comatose while connected, I find it difficult to square Hayles' conception of cyberspace with that of today's. When we use the internet the point of view is surely the same as if we use a book or similar to convey any interaction. When discussing this previously it is the sense of corporeality or location in the Jamesian version of point of view which has been argued for as the difference but I don't see how this alters point of view when applied to cyberspace. Hayles seems to be making a presumption that cyberspace and traditional publishing are fundamentally different somehow. While I don't agree on this point I think the idea of point of view is interesting given the developments in cyberspace since Hayles' text was written. 

Hayles states that "The crucial difference between the Jamesian point of view and the cyberspace pov is that the former implies physical presence, whereas the latter does not." (Hayles) Where I see this working is when, in cyberspace, content or actions are created through non-human means. In The Matrix we see this in action due to machines having become sentient, although machines with a human sentience probably still aren't truly an unembodied form being as they have taken on human traits. For me it is when actions and content are created purely through non-human means that the idea of floating pov really takes hold. 

In the final part of the section in Hayles' text that I am close reading she does seem to be moving in a similar direction to my own thoughts. She states that for "Gibson, the space in which subjectivity moves lacks this personalised stamp." (Hayles) Whereas I read her conception of pov as entirely lacking any corporeal touch she does appear to add a caveat in her further definition of cyberspace as "the domain of virtual collectivity, constituted as the resultant of millions of vectors representing the diverse and often conflicting interests of human and artificial intelligences linked together through computer networks." (Hayles) Here for me is the crucial difference between the traditional conception of point of view and that via cyberspace. Instead of the cyberspace version being defined by lack or not of physical presence what we really see is the difference being that of individualism vs collectivity. There is a fight occurring involving capitalism and individualism on one side and anti-capitalism and collectivity on the other. Cyberspace or the internet reveals to anyone with a connection an unmediated and effortless view of how we are all one human race and not individuals living in separate countries. Previous gatekeepers of mass media have either ignored this fact or chosen to ignore it for whatever reason. The internet has allowed myself and many others to freely see that there is no such thing as racism. In accordance with Paul Gilroy's concept of planetary humanism we are not different races, just different types of the human race from different parts of planet Earth. 

What we see in both The Matrix and Hayles' writing are, for me, early conceptions of great change occurring. We have left the analog world and now live in a digital one. I feel that we are still at the very beginning of this epoch and therefore confusion about what is happening, and even recognising that it is occurring, isn't clear to a wide number of people. The older analog generation have in many circumstances ignored the internet and its power and have hence been sidestepped in a number of areas such as the rise of right wing populism which the internet has undoubtedly fuelled. While we traverse this (perhaps lengthy) transition period further misunderstanding and denial will need to be dealt with until such a point as anyone older than Generation Xenial has either passed away or come to terms with the new world.

1999 seems to be an important moment in the development of digitalism with both The Matrix and Hayles’ How We Became Posthuman both being originally released in that year. With more and more human communication becoming digital, pov and The Matrix’s comparable ideas reveal the unusual similarity of both works and their (perhaps unwitting) prescience.

Bibliography

1. Hayles, Nancy Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2010.

2. “The Matrix - What Is Real?” YouTube, YouTube, 16 Sept. 2013, youtu.be/VVro5wxqh4U.

3. Read, Rupert. “Rupert Read Writing.” The Matrix, 5 Nov. 2018, rupertreadwriting.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-matrix.html.