While attending and speaking at the recent SMX West conference in Santa Clara, I had the opportunity to photograph Vinton (“Vint”) Cerf, Google’s VP and Chief Internet Evangelist during his keynote interview conducted by Chris Sherman.

After returning, one of my friends saw my pics and remarked that Vint Cerf resembled the Architect character in the Matrix movies. It immediately struck me that he was right — so I knocked together a comparison pic:

Vint Cerf and the Architect in the Matrix share a number of feature similarities: similar age, dress, coloring, and facial hair. The biggest difference is that the Architect has a full head of hair while Vint is balding.

In the last two films in the trilogy where the Architect appears, the character is portrayed by Helmut Bakaitis.

Further underscoring the resemblance, the Architect in the Matrix is depicted seated in an armchair during the pivotal scene when he’s introduced, and Vint Cerf was seated on stage with Chris Sherman during the SMX Keynote:

As I recall, Cerf was not obsessively clicking a Bic pen the entire time he spoke with Chris Sherman, though.

Okay, I’m not the first to mention this resemblance — TotallyLooksLike mentioned it as well, along with a few others.

I wonder, could the Wachowski Brothers who wrote and directed the films have been somehow inspired by Vint Cerf when they created the Architect? I see that a number of others out there have mentioned Cerf in relation to the character, but no direct proof that the Wachowski’s knew who he was, much less based a character in whole or in part upon him.

Okay, am I a total geek airhead for posting this?

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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 02/20/2009

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Filed under: Conferences, Futurism, Google Architect, Chris-Sherman, Google, The Matrix, Vint Cerf

