The idea for this dissertation arose from the culmination of a number of thoughts that have interested me for some time. The question of 'reality' has always intrigued me. I perceived it as tangible and exact but at the same time intensely vulnerable. I saw the frailties of 'reality' exposed by the many differing ways it can be perceived. These differences of perception can be attributed to factors such as age, sex, colour, nationality, religion, political views, all of which alter the way we process what are presented to us as 'facts' by our senses. So numerous are these factors, I reasoned, that every person living, or that has ever lived must have a unique sense of reality. A point of perception so tailored to his or her own identity that it could never be shared exactly with anyone else. Having considered this idea, I arrived at a primary solution that there was no such thing as a shared reality. Furthermore, the word 'reality' should only be used tentatively and only accurately in relation to a specific individual's view of a subject. However, having arrived at this conclusion I became aware that allowin

To this extent at least television and the media can be seen as our own Matrix. We turn on our televisions and at once become,

In his introduction to the book, Patton comments that the first and most basic way in which the media can corrupt reality is in the confusion of past and present. He claims this was achieved unilaterally during the War, the present being portrayed as the past with the whole war as a John Wayne film complete with action-movie language. We also saw the past being represented as the present, video footage of a sea bird, covered in oil from the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989 where used to illustrate the ecological problems in the Gulf.

Despite Plato's view that art can never achieve the accuracy of the thought in the artist's mind, the inadequacies of language led mankind to use art as a method of communicating the individual's perception of reality. John Berger discusses the significance of art in the development of human communication in detail in Ways of Seeing . Berger explains how art became a unique form of presentation and initially was used only for religious and spiritual purposes and was inseparable from the place and purpose for which it was created. At this stage, I believe art was as far away from the code of communication as is possible. Of course individuals could observe, and impose upon it their own reality defining codes, but art stood alone communicating as accurately as possible the realities of its creator. Later art was taken into the houses of the wealthy, partly to enhance the self image of the owner and also to confirm the role of ownership, owning the image of a thing translating to actual ownership. It is here that art entered the world of the code. It was used by the wealthy as a sign of their wealth part of their self-defined code by which they judged themselves and were perceived by others. Modern reproduction and distribution techniques have removed art from any preserve it once had. As Benjamin believed, when art is reproduced it loses its original 'aura' and enters a new role. It has become ubiquitous, part of the code and used with such regularity that we use it to define ourselves or present our ideas. It has been reduced to the level of the proverb in providing a template for our realities.

"You have a problem with authority, Mr Anderson. You believe that you are special, that somehow the rules do not apply to you. Obviously you are mistaken. This company is one of the top software companies in the world because every single employee understands that they are part of a whole."

Morpheus points Neo down the path towards defeating The Matrix by freeing his mind from all the realities formerly imposed upon it. He believes Neo must centre on the fluid, organic nature of his mind that, if focussed will overcome the world of proscribed rules on which The Matrix is based. However, as Morpheus says, this is a state that must be achieved alone:

"Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition...the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things."

"Everything which is turned into information becomes the object of endless speculation, the site of total uncertainty."

Some common words found in the essay are:
Hell Heav'n, Matrix Neo, Seeing Berger, Jung Freud, Reality Bytes, Agent Smith, Doors Perception, Nosce Thyself, Matrix Neo's, Wilhelm Leibniz, perceptions reality, perceive reality, maintaining reality, matrix reality, doors perception, reality matrix, maintain realities, construct realities, 'the real', matrix neo, construct realities enables, manner construct realities, object relations theory,
Approximate Word count = 8061
Approximate Pages = 32 (250 words per page double spaced)