Just getting through a major back-log of e-mail and came across this link to a blog entry by Mike Lynch in Sydney on The Matrix. “The Matrix is a metaphor for capitalism, under which humans (the proletariat) are kept in a state of passive illusion (false consciousness) while the machines (the bourgeois) feed off their 'energy' (alienated labour). That's why the humans-as-batteries scenario is necessary, even though it's just silly in science-fiction terms - for the metaphor to work, the bad guys have to be stealing the labour of the good guys.” Funny and oddly satisfying . . .