One question that I haven't seen addressed anywhere...
What do you think the significance is of the multiple monitors during the architect scene, and the many varying reactions by Neo to what the Architect was saying. Also, the moving between different iterations of this scene has me wondering as well. I'm speaking of when the camera flies through one of the monitors and into the "same" scene. Much like in the Matrix when Neo is first interrogated by the Agents. We see many monitors and we zoom into one of them.
Are these simulations by the Matrix of how things might pan out? Similar to how humans (I seem to do this) foresee a conversation they are about to have, and run through different iterations of how that conversation might go?
I like questions like these because they even though at first glance they may seem simple, answering them actually helps explain certain interesting aspects of the film that might otherwise be overlooked.
Lots of folks have noted that the monitors that fill the Architect’s room are identical to the monitors from the interrogation scene in the first film. That having been said, what is the significance?
Well, let’s start by eliminating some of the more obviously wrong answers: the monitors are not showing recordings of previous Ones. The previous Ones were different people who only shared the ability to manipulate the Matrix. They may have been of either sex, any race and, if Morpheus is to be believed (always a questionable proposition in my mind) they were presumably younger, since he tells Neo that they normally do not free minds in people as old as he is.
What do the monitors show us? In each instance they seem to show us possible reactions to information or “stimuli.” This would seem to indicate that these are not actual reactions but rather anticipations of possible reactions. I think the author of the letter above is correct in stating that the screens represent different iterations or variations that the conversation may follow. This is an interesting thing to show, because it basically makes visual the “thinking process” that lies at the heart of current attempts to generate AI. When Big Blue beat Kasparov it did not do so by intuiting the right moves – instead it (like every other chess-playing computer) actually ran through all the potential moves and extrapolated from each of those moves possible counter-moves etc. etc. into the future. So the quality of AI does not depend upon the “quality” of its thought (after all, it views each of the potential moves as “equal” prior to “playing them out”) but rather on sheer brute ability to calculate, very quickly mind you, an almost innumerable number of variations. So the screens are not “predictive” – unless you count as “prediction” the evaluation of every conceivable future.
Humans, unlike machines, are constantly prioritizing their evaluation of sensory input. For most of your life you are unaware of the feeling of your clothing against your skin, for instance, even though your nerves never cease to register that information. Information like that is filtered out by the subconscious so that we can concentrate our “computing power” on what appears to us as most immediate and relevant – the stuff that occupies our conscious thoughts. Some psychedelic drugs work in part by undermining the filtering function of consciousness, allowing people to “experience” feelings and “expand” their perceptions by bringing to consciousness perceptions that are typically “screened out” – like the feeling of their clothing on their skin or the subtle variations in others’ body language. Computers, on the other hand, are always exposed to totality of their sensory input and mimic or experience “consciousness” through the sheer ability to process each and every incoming “message.” They have no subconscious to shield them from such input and hence can only cope through the incredible computing power that is their hallmark.
That is what we see visually represented by the Architect’s screens – the Architect’s thought process as he plays through all the variations that Neo might generate (or history has generated) as a means of calculating – literally – the Architect’s best response. Each response Neo makes has been (presumably) anticipated and as he makes it he forecloses the possibility of having made any one of the multitude of other responses. So Neo is constantly pruning the “decision tree” available to the Architect, but at the same time each new response creates a new node from which a new variety of possible responses can be generated.
What does it mean then when we “fly through” the screen? As far as I understand it, it means that a decision has been made and the other potential futures have been discarded. A choice has been made and, as we saw in the Architect’s room, the process of calculation begins anew. That helps explain why the Architect is not “disappointed” by Neo’s choice – because he has no “hopes” that can be dashed. The Architect does not “hope” – he calculates possible futures and acts accordingly. Hope and disappointment are foreign to such beings (though not frustration). That is why the machines, like the agents, remain bound by the programmed laws of the Matrix whereas Neo can transcend them. The machines remain bound by rules, by what they calculate as possible given the rules – although they exploit those rules in a way humans cannot due to their calculative superiority. Neo, on the other hand, because he can hope – indeed, oftentimes has to hope since he simply cannot reckon all the consequences as a machine would – is able as an “anomaly” to bend or even break the programmed laws of the Matrix.
Humans are inferior in calculative capacity (hence the oft repeated phrase “merely human”) but the ignorance that this confers can in rare instances lead them to stumble upon larger truths – for example, that the laws of the Matrix do not reveal all possibilities, because the law cannot anticipate that the law itself may in fact be ignored to varying degrees – hence Neo can fly or parry a sword blade with his hand. What is revealed is a paradox – reason alone only reveals all currently possible, rule-bound futures, but reason cannot reveal futures whose possibility hinge upon a rejection of the rules – because reason is dependent on rules. The Architect does not lie when he tells Neo that Trinity will die, either in the Matrix or in Zion, because the rules allow for no other possibility (and let us not forget that ultimately he is correct – in the end we all die eventually). However, Neo is able to save Trinity, at least temporarily, because of his ability to transcend the rules written by others. “True” misbehavior (not merely “breaking the rules” with the expectation of “getting caught” – as in the case of Neo’s first attempt in the jump program) undermines the authority of the laws, whose power is rooted to a large degree in the conformity of thought, a conformity that the machines are constitutionally unable to break. Or at least most machines… what about the Oracle? She is not able to break the law herself, but somehow she is able to think past the law in a way no other machine has hitherto ever been able.
I recall from the commentary provided on the DVD of the first movie that "flying through the screens" (it also happens when Morpheus shows Neo the “desert of the real” and undoubtedly in other instances that I can’t recall off-hand) was also intended as a metaphor for the constant mediation of our “reality” by what we call “virtual reality.” Flying through the screens is meant to make us reflect (if only at a subconscious level?) that all of our life can in some way be considered as “virtual” – isn’t that the original conceit of the Matrix, after all? – since “reality” is actually mediated by our senses as edited by the screen of our consciousness.
Whoa!... thanks for the great questions. Keep'em coming! –Martin
8:48:37 AM 
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