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4 8 15 16 23 42

I just finished watching the second season of Lost on DVD. It’s become a cult classic as the third season gets underway, with fans offering all sorts of theories as to what exactly is going on.

It reminds me of where we were in 2003 after The Matrix Reloaded during the months before The Matrix Revolutions. Under the alias of Spoon Boy, I participated in a legendary online conversation that became #1 on Google. We got into all sorts of analysis and existential observations, predicting (often rabidly) where the Wachowski brothers were going to take us with the final excerpt of the trilogy. Aside of the folks that embraced the sci-fi story on the surface, some of the deeper thinking people regarded the Matrix story as a metaphor religions like Christianity and Hinduism, finding tons of related symbolism within the films. I for one was an advocate of the “it’s all A.I.” theory, and still love the notion that the whole thing is a metaphor for artificial intelligence. I went off on that here.

Although I’m somewhat of a latecomer to Lost, it struck me that nobody’s noticed that the thematic six numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 add up to the 108 minutes. Also notable is that the button’s alarm goes off with 4 minutes left in the countdown, implying that those 108 minutes could be considered a collective incremental countdown of 42 minutes, 23 minutes, 16 minutes, 15 minutes, 8 minutes, and 4 minutes.

I’m beginning to brainstorm this a bit more, and I’m pretty sure I’m not done yet. For starters, consider the word DHARMA, as in the DHARMA initiative. Notice how the letter D holds the fourth slot in the alphabet, H holds the eighth. Hmmm.

I hope the creative brains behind Lost stumble across something cool to share with us before this is all said and done. They’re really on to something with this if they do it right. Reminds me of the Twilight Zone meets Survivor meets Myst, with a sort of Matrixy flavor. Our cast just hasn’t met their Morpheus yet, which brings us back to the title of the show.

My theory for the record: IT’S ALL A.I.! 😉

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