Hacker Cinema
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
攻殻機動隊 STAND ALONE COMPLEX
2002 · TV series · 25 min episodes · 2 seasons
AnimationActionAdventureScience FictionFantasyCrime
In the future when technological enhancements and robotics are a way of life, Major Motoko Kusanagi and Section 9 take care of the jobs that are too difficult for the police. Section 9 employs hackers, sharpshooters, detectives and cyborgs all in an effort to thwart cyber criminals and their plans to attack the innocent.
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16 comments on Hacker News
> Personally I don't think Cyberpunk as a genre has died but rather that it had failed to adapt, by the early 00s we weren't as sure as to how technology would progress into the future and many of the existing assumptions they had made were wrong.
I think some of it has just moved on. William Gibson's novels from the 2000s are set in the present. There's no Ono Sendai and the Matrix, instead there are iPods, Google, and weird art is discussed in obsucure web forums.
The TV show Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex had a much more updated setting than the original manga. That show has dated quite well since it first aired 20 years ago.
> PsychoPass, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Attack on Titan.
I totally agree with everything on this list, except Akira and NGE. And I am saying that as someone for whom NGE is the all-time personal favorite piece of animated media (and I like Akira a lot too, just not as much).
Akira and NGE are pretty much deconstructions of genres, and are really heavy on at least some basic level of previous exposure and understanding of the context. I am fairly certain that if you make someone without much previous exposure to the context watch Akira, you will get a very resounding "what the fuck did you just make me watch". Watched it in a movie theater myself around 5 years ago, and it was definitely a wild ride. With NGE, I rewatched it many times, partially because I almost always discovered something new on subsequent rewatches.
The rest of the ones you've mentioned are great for easing-in though, and are not shallow even in the slightest. I would also add Ghost in the Shell: Stand-alone Complex series to the list of recommendations.
There's a Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex episode featuring this idea (I'm rewatching the series right now so this was oddly timely) - the idea was a company genetically modified a pig to grow up a set of your own organs and keep the pig around in case you needed them as a type of insurance policy.
Which did get me wondering where we'd got to with xenotransplantation and it looks like this is very much the result of research in that direction: the pig was genetically modified to reduce the chances of rejection.
Good to see we're still doing this research, since bioprinted or pure lab-grown organs are by no means a sure-thing.
Sounds like GitS:SAC[1] season one. Person is Aoi, created The Laughing Man, an impromptu hacker persona, to expose that micromachine corporations were hiding the fact that expensive micromachine treatments were ineffective against Cyberbrain Sclerosis and that an inexpensive vaccine called Murai existed that was effective. The Laughing Man persona was then used by various corporations to profit in various ways.
Or were you thinking of something else with a similar plot?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell:_Stand_Alone_Complex#Season_1
This reminds me of an episode of Ghost in the shell (the serie, season 2 episode 4).
from the description of the episode:
the pilot of the helicopter suffers a massive heart attack, and the Jigabachi begins to spin out of control. The on-board Artificial Intelligence gets the helicopter back under control, and the military officers running the drill decide to abort it out of concern for the safety of their troops. However, the AI aboard the Jigabachi refuses to acknowledge the order to return to its parent JMSDF aircraft carrier. Acting on the assumption that the chopper is under attack, the AI overrides the flight controls of other armed Jigabachi aircraft, an air tanker from the carrier, and several nearby military bases, ordering these units into a tight defence formation in the heart of the Niihama Refugee Residential District.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ghost_in_the_Shell:_Stand_Alone_Complex_episodes#S.A.C._2nd_GIG
In the Stand Alone Complex timeline, Kusanagi is literally several different people throughout the story. She assimilates memories from a few different sources (the tank in episode 2, the Laughing Man, and Kuze, Puppetmaster in the SAC:SSS movie). It's implied (and made explicit in other GitS timelines) that the only reason she is able to do this and maintain her sense of self is because she was "cyberized" as a young child and had to figure out the answer to the question "who is Motoko Kusanagi?" independently of her physical form.
She even has a line towards the end of the SAC:SSS movie that says something like "next time you meet me I might be a completely different person". But there is indeed a "base" personality that she tries to hold on to (e.g. via her watch) despite the wide range of memories she acquires.
I think my favorite part of Stand-Alone Complex by far (aside from how incredibly prescient much of it is) are the Tachikomas. I really love the idea that the first AGI we develop will necessarily have to pass through a pretty childlike level of understanding about the world while having some unsettling levels of intelligence and competence in some aspects. I love the episode where they're trying to hide the fact that they're developing individuality/sapience but are fairly inept at doing so.
Also, just the psychological warfare aspect of having a military tank with an adorable personality is great.
I recently chatted about the potential use of DeepFake in future propaganda with other HN readers, and apparently it's going to be here soon. You may want to follow this thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21269150
But in short,
Several observations...
* A major threat is end-to-end VoIP/telephony encryption. Currently, the most common way to verify one's public key and ensure that no MITM wiretapping is going on, is reading a hash (encoded to words) aloud in a phone conversation. It's used to many protocols, such as Signal, or ZRTP by Phil Zimmermann et al. There is no real security, but it's considered a shortcut with reasonable security for most people, the assumption is that voice synthesis cannot be done in real-time yet. But with DeepFake it's disastrous for cryptography. Now, this shortcut is going to be blocked soon. Full verification, like signing your VoIP key with your long-term public key, or asking security questions (e.g. OTR's SMP algorithm) is needed (perhaps not to everyone, but it's now required for a lot of people to a greater extent).
* KirinDave suggested that, in additional to signing, timestamping will also be important. If automatic synthesis of video and audio becomes widespread, one way to prove the authenticity of the material is to timestamp it as soon as it's recorded, or even timestamping it in real-time if real-time forgery is a serious threat (I hope not). This is one of few use cases that a blockchain actually makes sense if you want minimum trust over 3rd-parties.
The final thought is that it's time to rewatch Ghost in The Shell (the TV animation series, not the movie). Released in 2000s, it portrayed and predicted our world remarkably well, and it'll give you a lot of inspirations of what would the future society look like. In one episode, the protagonists realized a government conspiracy aimed to intensify a military conflict that involves nuclear weapon, and they had the following dialogue.
> "How do we stop it? Can we post the video footage online?"
> "No. Video footage is seen as completely untrustworthy today."
Two things comes to mind:
First of all, Max Headroom. I think there it was a felony to turn your TV off or some such.
Second, Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It is a anime tv series that involves an undercover security force in future Japan.
Great list! I've read only a couple of them.
Hyperion was intriguing but Fall of Hyperion was too slow for my tastes.
Snowcrash was great. One of my favorite audiobook narrations too!
You might also like Malazan Book of the Fallen and Discworld. Malazan especially is a masterpiece of world and history building.
Oh, and the Ghost in the Shell series would definitely be a great fit for you. A good start would be the original animated film from the mid-90s. If you enjoy that, jump to the anime Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
If you like the philosophy of this, I heartily recommend you check out the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. The second season is so-so, but the first season is amazing and jam-packed with cyberpunk and philosophical challenges like this one.
They’re also doing a (whitewashed) live-action version of some amalgamation of the movie and TV show, so might as well watch the original (1.0) movie and anime, before Hollywood ruins them for you.
Not alexleavitt, but I'd go with this viewing order (for the whole franchise):
* Ghost in the Shell: Arise - Alternative Architecture
* Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie [sic]
* Ghost in the Shell
* Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
* Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
* Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig
* Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society
Not all of them are strictly speaking in the same universe, but afair this gives the most chronological feeling results ;)
In fact, I would argue that Ghost in the Shell's entire franchise remains the most intriguing and exciting science fiction media about networked technology.
If you have never seen the 2-season TV series (and 3 additional films), "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell:_Stand_Alone_Complex), it is by far the best contemporary outlook on near-future internet technology still. Black Mirror is up there, but I think that Ghost in the Shell: SAC presents this cultural criticism in a much stronger (ie., less unhappy) tone.
> the few times I've recognized a reused asset (e.g. > a sound effect)
The "pig farm" sound effect from WarCraft II... I've heard that one a lot. From tv shows to films to other games. The only one I can pull off the top of my head of Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex Season 1.
1. Ghost in the Shell 2. Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex - series not a movie 3. Primer 4. Zizek The Movie 5. Pi 6. Gattaca 7. Waydowntown
Reminds me of an episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex...