THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS

Part 1:

By the time I came to watch some of The Matrix Revolutions in 2014, the Matrix phenomenon had already come to an end for five years.  This film was a 2003 American science-fiction action piece, and was the third installment of  The Matrix Trilogy. The film was released six months following The Matrix Reloaded. The film was written and directed by those same Wachowski Brothers, and released simultaneously in 60 countries on 5 November 2003. By 2003 I had been retired from all FT and PT paid employment, and had taken an early retirement.

While this film was the final in the series, the Matrix storyline continued in The Matrix Online for the millions of Matrix enthusiasts with video-game proclivities.  The Matrix Online was a multi-player online game developed by Monolith Productions.  It was the official continuation of the storyline of The Matrix Trilogy. The game ran continuously until it was shut down on 31 July 2009 by Sony Online Entertainment.  I had lost contact with all that was associated with the Matrix until this evening, as I chanced-upon a rerun during my visit with my son, his wife and my grand-daughter who is now 3 and who has made me a fully-fledged grandfather after some 20 years of my step-grand-fatherhood.

Part 1.1:

Sony Online Entertainment unexpectedly decided to discontinue service to the The Matrix Online game due to low subscription numbers by June 2009.  You can read all about "the final event" and "the game rankings" on this online game at several sites in cyberspace, if you so desire.  I leave that to readers here with the interest in a film phenomenon that captured the interests of millions in the last dozen years or so.  

By 2009, when all that was Matrix had ended, I was on two old-age pensions and had reinvented myself as a writer and author, poet and publisher, online blogger and journalist, editor and researcher, reader and scholar.

Part 2:

The game itself became the official continuation of the universe, story and characters established in The Matrix series of fictional works. Those works included the Movie Trilogy, The Animatrix short films, the Enter The Matrix video game and a series of officially written and produced Matrix comic books. This continuation was written by the award winning comic book writer Paul Chadwick, and later collaboratively with MxO lead game designer, Ben "Rarebit" Chamberlain.

Again, I won't give you the details of the plot and the story-line, the characters and the cast, the production and sound systems, the budget and box-office revenues, the film's reception and the many references to the film in the media. You can read all about these aspects of this final film in the series, if you have the interest.

Part 3:

I'll put all this to bed

now as I head into my

70s in the next 5 months

as old-age creeps-up on

me in this 21st century.

There are so many realities:

virtual, secondary, primary,

metaphorical, personal, and

to each their own as we head

into this climacteric of history,

and as we head into our own

futures toward death, into that

hole from which no man returns,

to the end of our days, & in these

time-of-the-end days, eschatology

as they say in theological circles.(1)

(1) Eschatology is that part of theology concerned with what are believed to be the final events of history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity. This concept is commonly referred to as the "end of the world" or "end time".

Ron Price

4/3/'14.

PIONEERING OVER FIVE EPOCHS

A. MY TYPE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING

1. Everything I do with other people online is part of my particular type of social networking. My social networking is associated with three basic activities: (a) the creation of a personal webpage that serves as a home base, a central hub, for my writing, for teaching and consolidation, that is, community building, for service and social activism, as well as for feedback from others---should they wish; (b) the creation of a detailed personal profile(see Appendix 1 below) which I post at over 8000 internet sites which readers at these sites can access, again, if they wish; and finally (c) posting my writing at these 8000+ sites, and interacting with others about my posts and theirs. In the process I promote my website, and my writing, at these 8000+ internet sites.

2.  In the last decade, 2004 to 2014, I have created an extensive audience or readership. I address myself to a circle, a crowd or single individuals. I try to make of my interactions more than the typical ones found at sites like Facebook and twitter.  The interactions or connections at such popular social networking sites often reduce friendship to a feeling or an image, a sense of connection to faraway or nearby friends about everyday things based, for the most part, on very short, pithy posts.  Such connections involve posts that often contain little about one’s true difficulties in life. A world of privacy and an image is created. There is nothing wrong with that, with this type of site and networking style, but it is not my style, not my approach, not my MO, modus operandi, to use a who-dun-it term.

3. I post a great deal about what I think in the form of prose and poetry, generally more extended pieces of writing than the posts found in the Facebook and twitter world. My posts are far beyond the one-liners, the jokes, what I did today, what I ate for dinner, I poke you, I like this and I don’t like that, the ‘here are some photos of this’ and ‘here are some pictures of that’, ‘here is a video of this’ and ‘here is a piece of music,’ etc.

B. MY WEBSITE

1. My website has been on the internet for the last 17 years: 1997-2013.  It is part of a tapestry, or perhaps a jig-saw puzzle is a more accurate word, for all my poetry and prose both at my website and elsewhere in cyberspace at those 8000+ sites mentioned above.  I have dozens of links at my site, some linked to my writing at other internet sites, and some linked to resources created by others.  I have created a large thread of words across the internet since leaving the world of jobs in the late 1990s and taking a sea-change at the age of 55. 

2. My cyberspace creation is made by a now self-employed individual: a retired teacher and lecturer, tutor and adult educator, taxi-driver and ice-cream salesman. I am now a poet and publisher, writer and author, editor and scholar, researcher and blogger, scribbler and sampler within the immense commentariat and blogosphere that is the world-wide-web. 

3. I am now 69 and I attempt to endow various themes and a wide range of subjects in the arts and sciences with many layers of meaning. In these last 16 years on the world-wide-web I have evoked a complex range of responses in readers who come upon my work, responses which range from lavish enthusiasm to utter indifference and quite intense criticism. The solitary work of literary creation requires a type of talent, some earned ability or unearned gift of grace which is almost never collaborative. Social networking may expose readers to this or that book, this or that video or piece of music, this or that restaurant, food dish or pleasurable activity, this or that idea or cause.

3.1 The solitude I require to create an essay, a poem or a book requires my ability to draw on the globally interrelated, interdependent and interlocked system of the WWW to market my wares.  Until my work is ready to be placed in cyberspace the activity is intensely private, although I often draw on the work of other writers in composing my own literary creations. The marketing of my work is also private, and then the feedback comes in or it does not as the case may be. Not everything I write in cyberspace is commented on by others.

B.1 MY WEBSITE AND OTHER INTERNET SITES

I will continue to use my website as the central hub for my literary work, for my internet teaching and learning activity, for my now several million words and many books on the internet in this 2^nd decade of the 21^st century.   My writing is found in the form of: essays and blogs, poems and articles, ebooks and message boards, threads and special topic sites, indeed a myriad types of discussions.  I do not engage, though, in any sort of aggressive proselytising or heated exchange at those 8000 websites that are part of this personal and industrious exercise. When what I write produces vehemence and invective, heated criticism at some site, I simply leave if I am unable to cool the emotional climate at the site. Sometimes I am banned before this occurs for a variety of reasons: Christians only, Muslims only or some other form of exclusivist site-policy. Sometimes what I write is considered spam and, even after I defend my case, I am sometimes excluded from some site. In cyberspace as in any real space, one cannot win all the time.

C. MY WRITING STYLE AND MY VALUES

1.I have tried over the last several decades of my life, looking back as far as my own junior youth in the 1950s, to develop a writing style which, while fusing together material from many academic disciplines, from my own life as well as from my value, belief and attitude base, aims to be both provocative and intellectually stimulating on the one hand and light and entertaining on the other.  In writing, as in daily life though, one wins sometimes and one loses at other times; one’s writing appeals to some and not to others. One’s value, belief and attitude base is a set of assumptions around which one places one’s emotions and then proceeds to act and argue one’s case before the court of life.

2. I possess an obvious enthusiasm for my evolving values, beliefs and attitudes as well as the several causes I promote or I would not have been associated with them in their overt form---for nearly 60 years; nor would I be promoting my ideas in a multitude of forms, subtle and not-so-subtle, on the internet as I do and have done since retiring from FT work in 1999, PT in 2003 and most casual-volunteer work in 2005.

D. MY READERSHIP

1. I now have several million readers on the internet. It is difficult to guesstimate readership precisely in cyberspace when there are now nearly 300 million sites and over 2 billion users, and when one writes at as many sites as I do.  Many of the sites at which I post my writing and interact with others keep me informed about how many people click-on to what I have written. 

2. I am engaged in varying degrees of frequency and intensity, in parts of this tapestry, this jig-saw puzzle, this literary product, this creation, this immense pile of words with hundreds of people with whom I correspond on occasion as a result.  I keep most of this correspondence as infrequent as possible or I would drown in this new form of letter writing: the email and the internet post.

E. THE WWW AND PUBLISHING

1.This amazing technical facility, the world wide web, has made this literary success, this form of publishing, possible. This teaching and learning exercise, this form of service and often social activism, among the many other functions of my writing in the now wide and extensive dialogue I now have with diverse publics is an enriching one.  If my writing had been left in the hands of the traditional hard and soft-cover publishers, where it had been without success for the most part from 1981 to 2001, these publishing results with my now extensive readership would never have been achieved.

2.It is my hope that what I write as a result of this self-employment, this literary vocation and avocation, this pleasurable occupation of my leisure time, resonates with both the novitiate and the veteran on the one hand and the great diversity of people who are on a multitude of paths in their journey through life.

F. NOTE

APPENDIX 1:

EMPLOYMENT-SOCIAL-ROLE POSITIONS: 1943-2014

2010-2014-Retired and on an old-age pension in George Town, Tasmania

1999-2009-Writer & Author, Poet & Publisher, Editor & Researcher.  Retired Teacher & Lecturer, Tutor & Adult Educator, Taxi-Driver & Ice-Cream Salesman, George Town Tasmania Australia

2002-2005-Program Presenter City Park Radio Launceston

1999-2004-Tutor &/or President George Town School for Seniors Inc

--------ABOVE THIS LINE ARE MY YEARS OF RETIREMENT----------------------

1988-1999 -Lecturer in General Studies & Human Services West Australian Department of Training

1986-1987 -Acting Lecturer in Management Studies & Co-ordinator of Further Education Unit at Hedland College in South Hedland WA

1982-1985 -Adult Educator Open College of Tafe Katherine NT

1981 -Maintenance Scheduler Renison Bell Zeehan Tasmania

1980-Unemployed due to illness and recovery

1979-Editor External Studies Unit Tasmanian CAE; Youth Worker Resource Centre Association; Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour Tasmanian CAE; Radio Journalist ABC---all in Launceston Tasmania

1976-1978 -Lecturer in Social Sciences & Humanities Ballarat CAE Ballarat, Victoria

1975 - Lecturer in Behavioural Studies Whitehorse Technical College, Box Hill Victoria

1974 -Senior Tutor in Education Studies Tasmanian CAE Launceston, Tasmania

1972-1973 -High School Teacher South Australian Education Department

1971-Primary School Teacher Whyalla South Australia

---ABOVE THIS LINE ARE MY YEARS LIVING IN AUSTRALIA AND BELOW THIS LINE ARE MY YEARS LIVING IN CANADA-------------------------------

1969-1971 Primary School Teacher Prince Edward County Board of Education Picton Ontario Canada

1969-Systems Analyst Bad Boy Co Ltd Toronto Ontario

1967-68 -Community Teacher Department of Indian Affairs & Northern Development Frobisher Bay NWT Canada

1959-67 -Summer jobs-1 to 4 months each- from grade 10 to end of university

1949-1967 - Attended 2 primary schools, 2 high schools and 2 universities in Canada: McMaster Uni-1963-1966, Windsor Teachers’ College-1966/7

1944-1963 -Childhood(1944-57) and adolescence(1957-63) in and around Hamilton Ontario

1943 to 1944-Conception in October 1943 to birth in July 1944 in Hamilton Ontario

2. SOME SOCIO-BIO-DATA TO 2014

I have been married twice for a total of 47 years. My second wife is a Tasmanian, aged 67.  We’ve had one child: age 37. I have two step-children: ages: 48 and 43, three step-grandchildren, ages 19, 18 and 3, as well as one grandchild aged 2 years.  All of the above applies in January 2014.  I am 69, am a Canadian who moved to Australia in 1971 and have written several books--all available on the internet. I retired from full-time teaching in 1999, part-time teaching in 2003 and volunteer teaching/work in 2005 after 32 years in classrooms as a teacher and another 18 as a student. In addition, I have been a member of the Baha’i Faith for 53 years. Bio-data: 6ft, 230 lbs, eyes-brown/hair-grey, Caucasian.

My website is found at: http://www.ronpriceepoch.com/  You can also go to any search engine and type: Ron Price followed by any one of a number of words in addition to: poetry, forums, blogs, literature, history, bipolar disorder, psychology, sociology, media studies, inter alia, to access my writing________________________

End of document

GOOGLE-MICROSOFT

In the first year after I retired from FT work, July 1999 to July 2000, Google officially became the world's largest search engine. With its introduction of a billion-page index by June 2000 much of the internet's content became available in a searchable format at one search engine.  In the next several years, 2000-2005, as I was retiring from PT work as well as casual and most volunteer activity that had occupied me for decades, Google entered into a series of partnerships and made a series of innovations that brought their vast internet enterprize billions of users in the international marketplace. Not only did Google have billions of users, but  internet users like myself throughout the world gained access to billions of web documents in Google’s growing index/library.  It was a finer and more useful library than any of those in the small towns where I would spend my retirement in the years ahead. It was also a library with a myriad locations in which I could interact with others and engage in teaching and consolidation activities in ways I had never dreamt of in the first four decades I had been a member of the Bahá'í Faith: 1959-1999.

In 1994, at the age of fifty and as I was beginning to eye my retirement from FT work as a teacher and lecturer, Microsoft launched its public internet web domain with a home page.  Website traffic climbed steadily and episodically in the years 1995 to 1999.   Daily site traffic of 35,000 in mid-1996, at the very start of the new Bahá'í culture of learning and growth, the new Bahá'í paradigm, grew to 5.1 million visitors by 1999 when I had taken a sea-change and retired to Tasmania at the age of 55.  Throughout 1997 and 1998 the site grew up and went from being the web equivalent of a start-up company to a world-class organization.  I retired from FT work, then, at just the right time in terms of the internet capacity to provide me with: (a) access to information by the truckload on virtually any topic; and (b) teaching opportunies, both direct and indirect, far in excess of any I had had in my previous years as a Bahá'í. 

This new technology had also developed sufficiently to a stage that gave me the opportunity, the capacity to post, write, indeed, “publish” is quite an appropriate term, on the internet at the same time.  From 1999 to 2005, as I say, I released myself from FT, PT, casual and most volunteer work, and Google and Microsoft offered more and more technology for my writing activity for my work in a Cause that I had devoted my life to since my late teens and early twenties.

The Internet has become emblematic in many respects of globalisation. Its planetary system of fibre optic cables and instantaneous transfer of information are considered, by many accounts, one of the essential keys to understanding the transformation of the world into some degree of order and the ability to imagine the world as a single, global space.  The Internet has widely been viewed as an essential catalyst of contemporary globalisation and it has been central to debates about what globalisation means and where it will lead.

There are now several hundred thousand readers, as I say above, engaged in parts of my internet tapestry, my jig-saw puzzle, my literary product, my creation, my immense pile of words across the internet--and hundreds of people with whom I correspond on occasion as a result. This amazing technical facility, the world wide web, has made this literary success possible. If my writing had been left in the hands of the traditional hard and soft cover publishers, where it had been without success when I was employed full time as a teacher, lecturer, adult educator and casual/volunteer teacher from 1981 to 2001, these results would never have been achieved.

I have been asked how I have come to have so many readers at my website and on my internet tapestry of writing that I have created across the world-wide-web.   My literary product is just another form of published writing in addition to the traditional forms in the hands of publishers.   The literally hundreds of thousands of readers(perhaps even millions since it has become impossible to keep even an accurate account of all those who come across what I write and see the name of the Cause) I have at locations on my tapestry of prose and poetry, a tapestry I have sewn in a loose-fitting warp and weft across the internet, are found at over 4000 websites where I have registered: forums, message boards, discussion sites, blogs, locations for debate and the exchange of views.  They are sites to place essays, articles, books, ebooks, poems and other genres of writing.  I have registered at this multitude of sites, placed the many forms of my literary output there and engaged in discussions with literally thousands of people, little by little and day by day over the last decade.  I enjoy these results without ever having to deal with publishers as I did for two decades without any success.