THE ORACLE

What’s really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything.18

This scene invites a question about real-life policing: Would cops still have warrants to knock down the doors in majority Black neighborhoods if predictive algorithms hadn’t said anything?

The Matrix offers a potent allegory for thinking about power, technology, and society. It is set in a dystopian future in which machines overrun the world, using the energy generated by human brains as a vital source of computing power. Most of humanity is held captive in battery-like pods, their minds experiencing an elaborate life- like simulation of the real world in order to pacify humans and maximize the amount of energy brains produce. The film follows a small band of freedom fighters who must convince Neo that the simulated life he was living is in fact a digital construction.

Early on in his initiation to this new reality, Neo experiences a fleeting moment of déjà vu when a black cat crosses his path – twice. Trinity, his protector and eventual love interest, grows alarmed and explains that this “glitch in the matrix” is not at all trivial but a sign that something about the program has been changed by the agents of the Matrix. The sensation of déjà vu is a warning sign that a confrontation

is imminent and that they should prepare to fight.