8BitKid: Living Bit by Bit

“Ghost in the Shell” helped cement my love of cyberpunk and sparked my interest in how the web can serve as a manifestation of our collective subconscious. I have an original pencil-sketch from the movie that greets me every time I come home. So when I came across the following news, I gagged a little.

According to this article on Anime News Network, DreamWorks has optioned “Ghost in the Shell” and will be turning it into a live-action film. This was something I joked about when I heard that “Akira” would be getting a similar makeover. It seems that as Hollywood runs out of comic book plots to maim they are turning to seminal anime films.

DreamWorks, I implore you, please do not make this another “Ultra Violet”. Do this film justice. Restore my faith in mankind. Seriously.

“Wolf’s Rain” takes place in a dystopian world ravaged by war where the last remnants of the human race are scattered about the globe in city-states. These cities are the last safe enclaves for mankind, and are ruled by a near-mythical echelon known as “The Nobles”. Intermingled with these city-dwellers are the final descendents of the thought-to-be-extinct race of wolves. The wolves possess the ability to shift their shape between their animal form and that of a person, and it is through this device that they are able to remain undetected as they too scrounge through life trying to make ends meet.

The story revolves around a pack of wolves that come across each other and are led by a mysterious new-comer to the city, Kiba. Kiba is on a quest for the mythical “paradise”, and is driven by his determination that there is this heaven-on-earth that holds the secret to salvation for all wolves. Others join him in this search, and the plot that unfolds details the adventures of the pack as they go out in search of their promised land.

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The word on the street is that Leonardo DiCaprio and Warner Brothers are teaming up to make a live-action version of “Akira”. They will take the manga story arc and split it into two films; the first one will be released in 2009. The setting will be changed from “Neo-Tokyo” to “New Manhattan”.

Really? Really? Does this really need to be done? Are there no “Titanic” sequel scripts lying around that LeoDio can lend his creative energies to?

This is now the second anime film near and dear to my heart to be getting the live-action treatment. “Neon Genesis Evangelion” is also in production, with WETA at the effects helm. Are anime remakes the next script-factory that Hollywood will be turning to once we run out of comic books? How long until Mila Jovovich is cast as Major Kusanagi in a new “Ghost in the Shell” film?

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“The current state of the net, which wasn’t around before humanity established its existence, loosely forms a subconscious mind; one which is split off from mankind’s consciousness. This mental level net and the electronic network now cover most of the world. The subconscious mind they give rise to is done so in the form of the general consensus of the whole.”

- Ghost in the Shell, Stand Alone Complex: Season 2, episode 15

If it isn’t obvious through the limited exposure you may have had to me through this blog, I am a fan of anime. Specifically, of philosophical anime with sci-fi themes. One of the shows that struck a chord with my mind is “Ghost in the Shell, Stand Alone Complex.” The series is built around the idea that a collective subconscious can give rise to copycats that are mirroring each other while lacking a singular shared source to mimic. In other words, since the near-future society of the series is a place where the internet enables people to constantly share information with each other, multiple people arrive at the same conclusion simultaneously.

This notion of how the internet can function as a collective subconscious had a marked impact on my own outlook as someone who works in web tech. In this age of del.icio.us, Youtube, and Facebook, we are, as users, continually aware of what others are doing. This is the power of non-verbal communication (a theme I will delve into at a later date). Just because people may not be consciously and intentionally exchanging information, the very nature of the internet gives rise to its more current incarnation as a largely crowd-sourced medium. Since the internet itself is a product of collective shaping, its content, in turn, seeps back out to the users, thus redirecting this collective pool of thought.

To me, this is not just a theoretical concept in a TV show, but an idea that has implications that are relevant to building a model of understanding why we seem to be rapidly moving towards certain conclusions simultaneously online, even when existing in isolation oblivious to the others. It is because we are all being exposed to the same information that the probability continues to increase that a subset of similarly-minded people will encounter a high percentage of the same data. The substantial extent of the commonality in ingested information leads these individuals to the same terminal point. This is a philosophy that can provide insight into how we currently interact with particles of information and illuminates the truth about the impact of the inevitability that we will, as a collective, be continuously linked through the web in the future. As we accelerate the pace at which we become interconnected through the fibers of the internet, it will, in turn, increase the osmosis of the digital collective subconscious that guides us independently towards a singular conclusion.