In 2011, economist Yanis Varoufakis posted an essay on his blog titled “The Trouble with Humans: Why is labour special and especially targeted at a time of crisis” that provides an interesting interpretation of the science-fiction classic The Matrix. The film’s basic plot: In the year 1999, a computer hacker named Neo (Keanu Reeves) learns from a mysterious figure, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), that the world he lives in is not real, but a sinister computer simulation designed by machines to keep humans content while farming their bodies for energy. He is also told the year is not 1999, but closer to 2199. After dealing with the shock of this revelation, Neo decides to leave the simulation, enter “the desert of the real” (the real world, which is dark, grim, and gothic), and join the human rebellion against the machines. In Varoufakis’s opinion, this film is so close to the way things actually are in our world that it is basically a documentary. by Charles Mudede