![]() ![]() By the 1980s, we had the theory of the brain in the vat – built on the impossibility of ever knowing for sure that you aren’t exactly that, your whole life simply electrical impulses wired into your tank.įor the philosophers of 1999, The Matrix meant boom time. Then came the first meditation of Descartes (1641), speculating that everything his senses told him might just be the work of an “evil demon”. In the allegory of the cave, Plato presented humanity chained to a cave wall, taking passing shadows for reality. In fact, as sibling co-creators the Wachowskis alluded to on screen, the film was just the latest in a long line of variations on a theme, nestled in the mainstream of philosophy. People fretted about the “millennium bug” and reality TV. Despite sunlit economies and political stability, a strange ennui and mistrust of technology hung over the end of the 90s. Of course, Neo chose red, as we told ourselves we would, too. ![]() How would we know? More ticklish still, would we want to? If, like Reeves’s weary hacker Neo, we were approached by Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus, would we take the blue pill to return us to life as it merely seemed to be? Or the red that promised us – however terrible – the real? But the premise was what made it a phenomenon, the idea our whole reality might be a virtual concoction. Yet for a relic, it never slipped far from view – still a familiar reference in a world divided between internet and IRL (in real life), its characters endlessly circulating in memes and gifs, often as vehicles for the acrid politics that define our 21st century.Ĭharli XCX and Troye Sivan on the cover of ‘1999’īack in the 20th, much of the highest excitement was reserved for the visuals – the “digital rain” of green code, the bullets slowed to a stop while Reeves swayed around them. “1999”, the recent song from Charli XCX and Troye Sivan, features wistful lyrics (“Those days, it was so much better”) and cover art in which the millennial pop stars wear the black leather costumes made famous by Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss as they battled the machines enslaving humanity. By the time of the first sequel four years later, they were already half-vanished, replaced by a private army of Nokias and Motorolas.īut now The Matrix is a relic too, a quaint slice of 90s nostalgia about to celebrate its 20th anniversary. ![]() Payphones were still everywhere in western cities when the film came out in March 1999. That’s just what we want to show you!įollow our posts in the next few weeks for a self-discovery journey that, hopefully, will open your eyes to the new reality of the tech jobs marketplace and prepare you for the challenges of a career in tech.T he Matrix has barely started when a phone booth is demolished, left as a smashed pancake of glass and metal. Just like you, he just needs to choose to believe in himself, to see the world with his own eyes, and with his own rules. For the story to flow, Neo needs to understand that everything he needs to unlock his full potential, lies already inside of him. Whether it’s obvious by now or not, let’s just get it out in the open: the main theme behind The Matrix’s Red Pill vs Blue Pill construct is choice. That’s one of the reasons why we rebranded this year’s Landing.careers Festival, and why we’re also aligning our brand and vision to build a Landing.jobs that could help you find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes!Ĭhoice. And we’re like, “Well, can we build an engaging journey that could help our tech professionals experience something similar while helping them better manage their careers?” What we’re trying to achieve with this is a shift, the same kind of shift that happens for Neo when he goes from being in this sort of cocooned and programmed world to have to participate in the construction of meaning to his life. $ Remember: all we’re offering is the truth. That’s precisely our goal with the Red Pill or Blue Pill series: help you see the world and your career in a brand new way. I loved the fact that a movie could challenge so much of my assumptions and give me a glimpse of a completely different perspective of the world. As a kid in junior high, that spent way too much time playing computer games, The Matrix was definitely one of the movies that I would watch over and over again. ![]()
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