The astonishing thing about that moment in The Matrix is the sudden connection between Trinity and a whole new world of knowledge. But isn’t that what all literacy ultimately leads to?
When we humans transitioned from oral lore to written language, we enabled individuals to access generations of knowledge that had proceeded their own lives, far more easily than ever before and without transcription errors.
And each time we have leveled up our media technology, we have increased our access to knowledge. Sometime in the 1990s I was having a telephone conversation with a colleague, when we both realized that we were looking things up the Web as we were speaking, both of us increasing our knowledge base during the course of our conversation.
At the time, this seemed shockingly new. Now it is an occurrence that we simply take for granted.
More tomorrow.
Unfortunately it’s still only practice that makes perfect.