Re: Belief - I'd like to share this item with you.

Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> writes:

On 11/03/2024 17:14, Richmond wrote:

Ernest Major <{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> writes:

[Origin of "The Matrix"]
I interpreted wiktionary as saying the sense 11 was a new
sense inspired by the film - so clearly not the meaning that inspired
the choice of the title for the film.

Maybe, but it cites 1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer, for sense 11,
so
such a sense must have existed before 1999.

>
It may have been mentioned, possibly by me,
that _Doctor Who_ story "The Deadly Assassin"
in 1976 presented "The Matrix", a computer
which contains memories of the Doctor's people,
"Time Lords".  It's experienced as a rather
dangerous "virtual reality".
>
William Gibson used "matrix" for - what being
inside the internet looks like, basically.
A space in which most online resources have a
visual representation, and you fly around
(virtually) like Superman to get to the data
that you want to deal with.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer>
mentions that Gibson's short story
"Burning Chrome" used the term in 1982.
"Burning" is story slang for hacking, and Chrome
is a person in the story whose money, not
personality, is under attack.

Another example of Gnostic ideas resurfacing in popular culture is
'Forbidden Planet'. The surface of the planet has a small settlement
with only two people, some animals, and a robot. This surface settlement
represents consciousness. But hidden beneath it is something vast, and
from which the powers of creation come (the unconscious). And demons
which lurk there are projected onto the outside world, the planet
surface outside the settlement.

If the settlement corresponds to the island in The Tempest, then the
vast space under the planet surface represents the ocean around the
island. Water is the symbol of the unconscious in mythology.

Why is it necessary to have mythology to understand things? Because
mythology points to things which cannot be described in words. All words
have opposites and so cause division. This is shown by this newsgroup
which is doomed to polarised arguments for all eternity.