2025, the year we took the red pill

A quarter of a century ago, the blockbuster action film The Matrix presented its messiah-like protagonist, Neo (played by Keanu Reeves), with a heady dilemma. Would he rather swallow the red or the blue pill?
This was long before "red-pilled" got co-opted into a crude political metaphor for embracing hard-edged conservatism. The Matrix was never partisan; it was a product of the late Nineties, a time when artists still felt queasy about the idea of society being consumed whole by silicon-flecked capitalism. "Hey man, slow down," Thom Yorke begged us on OK Computer, the technophobic Radiohead album.