Second, I completely agree with what you say about the procedural affordance of the matrix, mapping out the pattern of human lives, and I want to jump from that. In the movie (and in our own experience?) human experience and constitution are systematic and as you say, follow a pattern. When we look at Morpheus for instance, even though he is outside the system, his mind is constructed like the internal system of a computer that the agents are trying to “hack”. This shows that the human mind is a construction. It is even more obvious inside the matrix obviously. If we take the computer company Neo initially works in, MetaCortex (even just the name…), it is the epitome of the systematization of human life but also of society at large. As his boss tells him at the beginning: “Every employee understands they are part of a whole”. The members are conform constituents of a larger machine/system/whole (see for example the endless rows of cubicles). In this case, if one part of the system acts out and the whole system is affected. Humans are wired, connected, just like machines, and even more so today if we consider our presence on social networks.

Third, I am really interested in what you say about fate and I want to jump from that. Fate, as it is represented in the movie, is a system as well, one you cannot escape. But fate is most importantly a language – a CODE – used by the machines to control humans. Fate is a religious concept – the idea that a superior creator/being/God/machine decides for you – which adopts a discourse of determinism that deprives humans from their liberty while controlling them with the illusion of free will. Similarly, the matrix gives the illusion of free choice, this false consciousness, in order to keep them in line, because in the end, what you believe is what shapes your identity.