when i first watched the matrix

 folks only had desktop computers, and that too only the rich

laptops were fiction

nobody had anything to do with cellphones

I used to call home occasionally over a land line

We used to read book for information, and the movers-and-shakers would read magazines to stay up to date, and we would hang out in places and talk and make fun of each other as a way to pass the time.

Space was infinite, and walking to the gate from the hostel took a long time.

the idea of an immersive digital world  replacing reality was extreme, far out fiction, and hence utterly delicious

Gibson said "we live in a mediated world, everything's mediated"

As Tofler said, space has shrunk 

today the matrix (Wachowski ,not Gibson) is a reality, except that it's not the internet or the technology, rather torrent of information pouring out of copper wires, optic fibre and over the ether rendering minuscule our direct experience of reality and the consequent meaning/context/structure-of-the-world formation. 

Hot technologies (McLuhan) have taken over and we are hollow shells .we obey, we consume, we go through the motions, most of us imbibing legal enhancer-drugs ( caffeine, nicotine ) and downers (alcohol) while others go 'beyond', imbibing the illegal ones - charlie, molly, ludes

the monks could drop out, but now meditation has made the list of legal enhancers, so it's impossible to know in a retreat if you're breaking through to the real, or just consuming more manufactured 'real'.