A discussion of the film, The Matrix in the context of the future of books, the aestheticization of coding, and the insistence of the analog. Appears online in CTheory and in Life in the Wires: The CTheory Reader.
Near the beginning of The Matrix, Neo has hidden some data contraband inside a copy of Baudrillard's Simulations. The book is a joke of simulation in itself; bound in green cloth with gilt letters, it simulates the authority of a classic but has no backing or substance. It is all surface -- the inside has been cut out, is no longer essential. It is an empty prop in more ways than one. But is it a key to the film?