“No matter where you go, everyone’s connected.” Lain
[spoiler alert on my fav anime!]
Released in 1998, #serialexperimentslain remains fresh a nonce.
Early commentary on the imminent mass invasion of privacy and the perils of digitisation on human identity is made through Lain, a 14 year old girl’s sacrifice in a society, where everyone is connected to The Wired (representing the internet) and living digital realities. Lain too begins with her PC, given by her dad, Navi and gets deeper wired
The series slowly reveals through its ’13 layers’ of The Wired protocol stack:
Lain is an ‘executable program of flesh’, ‘software, not hardware’ representing the collective unconscious, ‘global neural network’.
She is omnipresent, omniwiscient, watching everything without explicating choosing to do so, versions of her violates the privacy of others.
Luckily, this type of dramaticism isn’t necessary IRL (no human sacrifices). But the fact that every time we connect (nowadays already 24/7), we are losing a part of ourselves to the global NN (Lain called it in 98) is very thought-provoking.
With all the intimate info, mistakes, or what not that anyone has ever done uploaded to AI, what would ALL RESET be here?
Lain in me wants to exercise her right to be forgotten without expunging the ‘hardware’
Kira