In 1999 we entered a simulated reality

1999 The Matrix

Enslaved humans are kept docile within the "Matrix" – a simulation of the world as it was in 1999.
[link to en.wikipedia.org]


Malcolm McDowell was in a movie called Class of 1999. Where the students discover that their teachers are actually robots. This fits the Matrix theme.

There's been a really strange theory rattling in the back of my head about 1999. The theory is that at some point in 1999 we entered a simulation, or pocket dimension. This is a synthetic reality that we entered into.

I think our clue was the Cher song believe, with the auto tune, and Britney Spears who brought about the second death of music.

Also, everyone who talks about 1999 always say that it feels like yesterday, I hear this over and over.

Of course the world wasn't perfect before we entered the simulation either, but it definitely had a different vibe to it.

Also whoever is running this simulation seems to love corporate rock, and synthetic pop, they'll have another fembot dance show for the Superbowl this year. By corporate rock, I mean that alternative and punk music died in 1999, and we saw nu-metal, and new rock come in, reprises of corporate rock was brought in.

They got rid of the Khakis, and got everyone back into Blue Jeans.



Everything since 1999 is derivative, and has a synthetic/plastic quality to it.

But you say, what about Indie Music? Well there was plenty of Indie in the 90s already, including Ben Gibbard.

There are certain caretakers of the simulation now, Simon Cowell for example, creating the new pop stars.

I think that the plans for the simulation originally came out of WWII. Then the Americans got the data and laid the groundwork for the simulation in the 50s. By the 70s everything had been planned out.

Especially since the 70s there has been synthetic food, medicine etc etc. In other words a fake version of something, branded as the 'real thing'.

Try to find a 'real' version of anything nowadays, it's damn hard. They don't even let GMOS be labelled.



Waiting for the next iPhone is sort of a symbol of the linear future. However what people aren't seeing is that all the component improvements on the iPhone are now on a sharp curve towards 'good enough'.

For a screen that small how much more resolution can the human eye use, for consumers how much better does the camera need to be etc. In other words beyond a couple more generations the iPhone will be good enough and the consumer fetish spin-doctors won't be able to convince you that there is something worth buying anymore. This is a metaphor for all other things too.

Mckenna mentioned that he felt that the formal run of history ended sometime in the early-mid 90s, and then moved into the post modern malaise. (paraphrasing)

He talked about going into Art galleries and seeing an eclectic mish-mash of decades, and post modern artist not having their own original point of view.

This is also the time that the Recycling campaigns got introduced to us in Elementary schools.

Now the regurgitation can no longer be hidden by the ad agencies, it's apparent for all to see, Soylent Green isn't people, it's history and old ideas being served up and eaten.

Cars from 2013 look like cars from 2003 The fashion industry recycles the 20s-90s in shorter and shorter cycles. Almost all films nowadays are re-makes, or reboots. Hipsters wear flannel shirts, buy vinyl, dress in eclectic clothing from past decades, they are basically recycling old ideas in shorter and shorter cycles.

What we call art nowadays is nothing more than eclectic nostalgia boiled down into a product. History is being packaged and sold to us in streets of gentrified 'urban regeneration'. Starbucks is like the borg implant that assimilates the body of the cities and paves the way for other cold glass shrines to the cult of consumerism.

That is what we are left with now, old ideas packaged as new products, not hoverboards or Jetpacks, just cycles of waiting for the next iphone. The iphone is like a nostalgia singularity, from sharing childhood memes to your 80s playlists.

The illusion of a linear march into the future is a sleight of hand by the advertisers, trying to convince you that there is something new under the sun.

However what is this technology actually doing for us, it's the carrier or medium for memes to be shared, it is the surrogate for the meme to be born. The meme is yourself made manifest, the human apotheosis. Not a technological singularity, but a human one.

Whatever the Apotheosis is I don't see it as something baroque or byzantine. It's not being an angel sitting on a cloud, flying a starship to Alpha Centauri, or walking around in white robes and sandals on the fifth dimension. No those things are just limited symbols of the true Apotheosis which is living your bliss.

A personal-sync filled solipsistic journey towards living your bliss. This man to god transition is essentially about turning inside out, bringing the interior landscape and making it manifest into the external world. That has been the collective human experience, bringing out the inventions from the human imagination and laying them onto the 'exterior' world of rocks water and trees, all of which happen to be fractal in structure which lend themselves to the workings of a holographic model.

It is a personal timewave though, the tone of the past 15 years has been that of an eclectic personal journey, and a move away from the collective imagination. We no longer all watch the same music on MTV at the same time, instead we have personal playlists. So this turning inside out process has moved away from the collective and towards the personal.



The other shift that people have noticed is that primary colors have gone from Red Yellow Blue to Red Green Blue. They remember Red Yellow Blue from Art Class. This one is explainable and isn’t too mysterious, computers use RGB and painters use RYB.

However the RGB primary colors didn’t really enter the public consciousness until about the mid 90s as most people were not familiar with computers yet. What is interesting is that this is about the same time period that people noticed the Sun getting whiter, and commenting that the colors in nature seemed more saturated in the 70s and 80s. I do think that this time period is some kind of shift point in time. This early 90s period is also when a lot of people remember the alternate New Zealand location i.e East or North East of Australia from the classroom.



I remember reading this book called 'Turnabout' by Margaret Peterson Haddix, and it featured two centennial women who aged backwards. They ended up in the year 2050 or something like that as teenagers. They went out to celebrate a birthday and the character narrating made a statement very similar, at least in terms of fashion and art. Everything that people were wearing was a new decked out version of previous decades, and the line I'll always remember was "just what was it about those psychedelic daisies that kept coming back?" Apparently it was the 4th or so incarnation of flower power being in vogue.