Idk I don't mind that the very poor that don't have phones still have an option to make phone calls. I know a lot of victims of abuse use them as a way to make phone calls that aren't monitored by their abusive partner. The homeless can use them, or maybe your phone died. I don't recall seeing ads on them but I'm not exactly looking out for payphones.

Plus I'd hardly can a phone call "ageing technology". I mean yes it's an old technology, but still very relevant especially for those that don't have other means of contact

I think they are still around because the government told them they can't remove them. They are considered a public resource. Remember, Telstra used to be a government entity before it was privatised.

The Telstra pay phone boxes near me now all have massive ridiculously bright screens displaying advertisements. For sure that is their primary purpose now.

If they offer wifi I’m guessing the phones are VOIP?

Australia. I believe it's local calls only, and yeah I'd assume it's using VOIP

Telephone booths were still pretty common until the early 90's

And the radio shows.

I can’t believe there was never a scandal about the short that suggests you can leave “The Matrix” by jumping to your death.

tetris11 got it, the sprinter from World Record.

Essentially, he's such a top tier athlete, so determined, that he... breaks through the veil of 'reality', in his pursuit of greatness.

Whereas the kid... has an incredibly certain sense of belief in ... more or less, the idea of Neo as a transcended individual, as a kind of means of attaining his own transendence.

... MxO went into more of these methods of either escaping or becoming aware of the Matrix, independently, as basically class build archetypes...

But I have absolutely no idea what the 'canon' status of any of it is, at this point.

Probably just 'not canon', I don't know.

Its also doubly confusing because back when MxO was running... different server shards actually experienced different 'storylines', due to there being a ... roughly every 3 or 6 month ... sort of faction competition for which variant of a major plot point would play out in which way.

So... these different shards all experienced kind of fundentally opposed 'canons'.

... but nobody remembers any of that, these days.

But at the same time....we are our choices and our memories.

Its also possible that... MxO, or a sequel to it was the video game that Neo was working on in Matrix 4.

So... who knows, really, hahah!

Yes, I would say that a kind of... immense spiritual awareness, or contemplative understanding of the interconnected nature of reality (and yourself) constitutes a kind of very strong belief.

Though I don't think its explicitly stated in the movies that the 'spoon kid' ... literally pulls himself out of the matrix...

In MxO, which is I guess roughly 'secondary canon', one of the kinds of character archetypes you can play as, is basically 'zen master', so yeah I would tend to agree that thats probably another reasonably valid 'canonical' way by which someone could escape the matrix on their own, transcend 'reality'.

No, that's the fourth movie.

They can talk to the operator using cell phones, but they can only exit through land lines.

Right. I have this conspiracy theory that the media and the government encourage UFO conspiracy theories so they can make them look nuts and crazy, so they are easily dismissed by the mainstream population. Same with the JFK assassination and a bunch of other stuff.

I think the word for this is co-opt.

You don't 'debunk' it.

You put your people either in control of, or position them as massively influential figures within it, or coax such people over to your flavor of that kind of messaging.

Should have gone for the plan with all the extras included...

They used the phrase Jack-In but never Jack-Out