ya i always though the matrix was the whole world. but Ush brings up a good point. the only thing i can think about the 1 percent is that not even close to all of them have been freed yet. many of that 1 percent are still wired in like neo was. morpheus did say that they rarely free someone as old as neo was, so my guess is that the vast majority of that one percent is still wired in.
That 'quote' redhotchillis gives is wrong, I believe. As I remember Morpheus says 'endless' fields, not fields of billions.
The ONLY person who says billions is Smith and as a problem with my theory that is granted but I think much else contradicts that.
And I think the Architect would tend towards precision. Not LITERAL precision, but he would not be as vague with his fractions as you suggest. I think the number of people who do not accept it is indeed close to one in a hundred. If it was actually something like 99.999% accepted the architect would have said something like "all but one in a hundred thousand."
Regardless, I think the thematic set-up of the films really does have the Matrix as smaller than would otherwise be assumed.
well Ush your right in the fact that it does seem very localized and everything that is taking place is taking place in this one city. the only comparison i can think of that would support a larger world would comparing it middle earth, a very large world but all the events that shape it take place in a comparatively small area. who knows, right that one down for us to ask the wachowski's.
I think Ush is right....but this thought leads me to another...one of the ideas behind quantom physics is that if no one is oberving a certain object, it does not exist...now would this be true for the matrix? if, for example, no one is observing a car parked on the street, would the mainframe computer running the matrix still process the code that makes the car "exist" or would it not bother to?
how big is new york? 5 million? so that would be up to about 50 million people, one percent would be 500,000 thousand, lets asume only half of that one percent has been freed from the matrix leaving our number at 250,000 people, which i believe is the size of zion. humm nice call Ush. i would have thought that for beleivablity for people in the matrix it would be a complete world. there does have to be programs simulating events that would be taking place outside of what the matrix is designed to show or people would become suspicious when they receive no news from the outside. plus there would have to be programs that simulate individuals from outside that say come into the designed world or have an effect on it.
Well Ushgarak I feel the Matrix itself after about 200 years may be a global entity. Sitting on every major continent. If not then the humans not affected by the "big machine" would have found a way to destroy if not cripple it.
The great war destroyed much of the earth and I think after 2 centuries the A.I. would have expanded itself with its primary centers in North America and/or Europe with satellite cores on the other continents. Using the rest of the earth as tremendously gigantic human harvesting fields.
hte architect said "...99.9% of all test subjects accepted the program..."
The Architect - Please. As I was saying, she stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly 99.9% of all test subjects accepted the program, as long as they were given a choice, even if they were only aware of the choice at a near unconscious level.
I seem to recall from the first Matrix movie that Neo was looking at a screen showing newpaper reports of Morpheous slipping past police at Heathrow Airport... This surely suggests that the Matrix is a construct designed on the "real" world circa 1999. The fact that they've chosen to base the action in modern day USA probably stems from the fact that it makes it more recognisable to international audiences than London, Moscow or wherever....
What I meant was that in absolute reality, the A.I. is global. Physically global. It's main core is based in one place on Earth, but that on all the other continents there are satellite core systems. This is the method of global control. It physically "sits" on all the major continents. That is also the method by which the population of "free" humans is kept under control. There cannot be a continent of free humans above ground because that would threaten the survival of A.I. So the human were "driven" below ground. A very finite living condition. Humans would need machines in order to exist below the earth's surface. Control.
The agents are a method of control over the "free" human population. Keeping the numbers manageable.