Did "The Matrix" depict a more optimistic vision of the future than we are now living?

Samuel Earle, "The Timeline We’re on Is Even Darker Than ‘The Matrix’ Envisioned," NYTimes, December 22, 2021.

In original Matrix films had an undercurrent of optimism:

Yet alongside this dark tableau, “The Matrix” also contained dreams of a better internet than our own. The eponymous computer simulation is a sinister mechanism of control, imposed upon humans to harness their energy. But after the simulation is seen as a construction (enabled by swallowing the “red pill”), people have the power to plug back in and traverse it as a truer version of themselves.

Such possibilities seem beyond the current web:

Despite the pseudonyms, trolls and alter egos that still dwell in some corners of the internet, its main byways now prize consistency and transparency over the risks of anonymity and reinvention. The idea of the internet as a place to cultivate an identity outside the slots other people put you in has been eclipsed by a social media-driven focus on creating an aspirational personal brand. Self-realization is now measured in likes, shares and follower counts.

“Our digital presentations are slicker, influencer-influenced,” Ms. Turkle, a professor of the social studies of science and technology at MIT, told me. “Everyone wants to present themselves in their best light, but now we have a corporate filter of what ‘pleases.’”

The cultural shift toward holding one narrowly defined identity — online and offline, across platforms — aligns neatly with Silicon Valley’s interests. The aim of many tech companies is to know us more intimately than we know ourselves, to predict our desires and anxieties — all the better to sell us stuff. The presumption that we each hold a single “authentic” identity simplifies the task, suggesting to advertisers that we are consistent, predictable consumers.