The movie opens with that very disclaimer that sums up to about, despite our advancements in technology and our interconnected international network setup, segregation as a means of distinction still exists.  Conflict still persists.  

"Countries and races are not yet obsolete..." 

And this comes to hold true in more ways that initially designated, as the new territory of what qualifies as living or who's deserving of personhood comes to be explored, rearing around the aforementioned stretches and bounds in morality that I've lead on from in my previous post.  But I'm getting ahead of the chronological assessment. 

 

We start off with Motoko Kusanagi, our protagonist, who's essentially the former consciousness of a woman, who's encased in a cybernetic shell with enhanced, super-human abilities.  We follow her on a covert operation, during which it's revealed through a series of gory events followed by a recollection of the creation of Motoko's body that while the standard human is augmented with incorporated technology in some form or another, Motoko's origin is unusual and unique.  

In her opening scene, she assassinates a political leader and proceeds to vanish by utilizing the camouflage quality of her skin, meaning that she carried out her mission almost entirely naked.  It's actually due to her mostly robotic nature that things like nudity for her are in no way played off as a gendered or sexual thing.  It's met with little to no regard from anyone, the absolute indifference solidifying the fact that she's objectified in a completely different, and a more literally, dehumanizing manner.  It's a large tip-off to an underlying issue, but I don't have much more to say about this specific issue. 

We cut to the pursuit of the phantom hacker, the Puppet Master.  Referred to as a him for a lack of knowledge stating otherwise, nothing is know about him. Not his age, sex , personal history, etc.  You get the drift.  He's causing major issues.  He aligns as a severe level threat among the rank of disobedient and defecting hackers hold in a work held together by an electronic and very much so hackable system.  He's wanted internationally for multiple large scale crimes.  One of the more horrific and specific to this series issues is ghost hacking the augmented and artificial brain of someone, a ghost essentially serving as the consciousness inhabiting a completely artificial body. He does this to major interpreter, and is then sought out by Motoko and her extended security team.  

A lot happens along the way, such as Motoko confiding in her friend Batou about her insecurities regarding her state as a cybernetic inhabiting being.  We've already seen how others regard her, but with her shields as relatively down as they can be for someone so even tempered, if not somewhat detached, seeing her bring to light some self regard for her condition in both service and existing in general is a lot more humanizing.  We get a look into the personal dissonance she experiences, even if it's from some off-handed comment that I'm probably over examining.  

Anyways, a lot happens plot wise.  Motoko's department corners and confines what they thought to be perhaps the ghost of the puppet master in a cybernetic female body, and after a series of issues ensue, including the crossing of institutions and some apparent internal corruption of rival security agencies, and the attempted retrieval of the the puppet master, its revealed that the Puppet master isn't even a ghost, but rather an artificial intelligence that achieved sentience while wandering the worldwide network.  

The story climaxes at this whole revelation, as the Puppet master reveals that he's contemplated and become frustrated with the facts that he could neither reproduce nor die, and that he's chosen Motoko as the one he would combine matrix's with, creating a sort of amalgam from the two of them.  This process, as well as the entire series on conceptualization he went through was astounding to me.  He'd found an analogous means to reproduction in order to create an entirely new being from two subjects, which solved both the dilemma of him never generating offspring as well as never passing on in a new sort of way.  That fact that he'd become sentient despite never originating from a human cerebrum, that he was essentially complex code from creation that came to rationalize its own existence, is the kind of stuff I love to see.  

The movie ends with Motoko, or rather the amalgam of Motoko and the Puppet master, accepting just who they are as the combination, looking over their city.

Overall, the movie rounded all corners of what I love to see in Sci-Fi, as well as what I love to see in the cyborg and artificial intelligence trope section.  Honestly, I love the conflict that surrounds the artificial and cybernetic life in works, whether it's conflict with societal perceptions to conflict within oneself, and I got to see all of that in a captivating story in beautiful animation.  Good plot and execution are key to me enjoying a series, and it helps if the work is aimed at my better interests.  

Of all the things that happened in the film, I will say that I didn't expect what I got out of the Puppet master, and I couldn't be happier with the surprise.  I love the whole, sentient AI thing.  I love the whole sentient AI coming to terms with their sentience thing.  I love that rejection they know they'll be met with when they seek recognition for their state of being and personhood.  What I did not expect, nor have I really ever though about, was an AI wanting to reproduce and die in the model of an organic life.  AI aspiring to and emulating their creators is a given to me, but this was a new take in my frame of reference.  It was a unique was for an AI to experience mortality, or the stress relating to the lack thereof.  I've seen AI's that were content with their existence in spite of their sentience, and I've seen AI's that are terrified of death/decommissioning, even AI's that sacrifice themselves or want to die out due to more depressing reasons, but none that particularly desire death as something that signifies they've lived.  

I could go on and on, but this post is getting a bit long, so I'll save my gushing for my presentation.

This is mostly a shorter version and general skim over what I'm going to thoroughly dig into, plot-wise, on the post I make that follows this one, so this post will remain mostly spoiler free, with me giving no more than summary level details and a queue into what main subjects I'll be dealing with in thorough detail later on, and topics worth consideration.  

Hip hip hooray for grey morality!

Ghost in the Shell tackles controversial issues within the confines of it's own fictional universe, and brings about some concerns regarding the repurposing of the human mind in cybernetic sciences as well as that regarding the recognition or rejection of sapient artificial intelligence.  Analyzing Ghost in the Shell as a work of fiction deals with the same subject matter, but from a more meta perspective.  As the viewer, one has the detached and unbiased lens (relative to those in the film's setting) through which they observe what conflicts in moral ideology take place.  

We follow Motoko, whose specific cybernetic qualities I won't yet discuss so I can further delve into later, as she goes about trying to reign in the issues surrounding a hacker known as the puppet master, as her occupation pertains to the upkeep and security of her region.  The film is set in the (not so far off) 2029, where the world is completely interconnected through an electronic network, making those who prey on or even through such a thing a matter of international security.  This is the best summary I can give you without revealing more than the official movie summary or anything important that I'll discuss later on.  

I'll be honest, I chose this movie specifically because I love AI's and cyborgs and morally dubious controversy regarding how sapient inorganic beings are to be considered.  Of course, I love them enough that I always want affirmative resolutions.  I'm the kind of person who'd say absolutely to the question "should we really consider these sapient things as people?  They aren't anything like us-" (Yes.  You should.  Be humane.  Also this is a call back to my Metropolis post). This movie falls right into my alley. That's all for now, MUCH more to come. 

I've always heard about the more eccentric and iconic instances of Star Trek's quirkiness, and I'm glad I finally got to see a couple of episodes (mostly because a few memes make a little more sense now since they've been given proper context).  I'm mostly speaking about the Trouble with Tribbles episode, because it was far more engaging and less full of these extremely gendered antiquities that I wish we could drop even now in the present.  

It was cute and needless of analysis for enjoyment, as I would assume most of the other veiled jabs at what used to be current international dilemmas would be.  Brazen in it's own way, Star Trek displayed such controversial topics of the time in such a negligible way, so as to keep some level in the entertainment business, but still instilling a sense of awareness to the kinds of conflict they present in countless analogous forms.  Groundbreaking in so many ways for it's casting and treatment regarding a diversity, I'm sort of wanting to watch them all for the sake of sci-fi nostalgia.  My grandpa and used to watch them all day before we moved to Texas, so I have a lot of bits and pieces that my barely five-year-old mind could remember (like Kirk's battle with the badly costumed lizard man).  When I got down to assessing why I liked the episode so much, while fully aware that TwT wasn't the standard for Star Trek, I guess it had more to do with the inane scenarios, which I happen to know is plentiful in Star Trek. 

I suppose this is more of an appreciation post again, and this is only the first and most shallow installation of the series.  I will admit that while I rolled my eyes and groaned for pretty much all of the other episode we watched, it still felt like the series could be a promising guilty pleasure of a tv series even today.  The insanity of the stereotyped gender stuff is miserable in my opinion, but I'm sure it was that era's cup of tea, and at least we don't have a ton of that now.  I mean Spock is with Ahura and Kirk is still an overbearing lady's man sometimes, but now those are the smaller, irrelevant tangents and not the drive for half of the story. 

More AI stuff!  I'm sure you guys love this kind of repetitive, shallow dissection by now!  This is actually going to be more of a quick skim and gush about the ship from the short story, Frozen Journey, but Philip K. Dick.  

I thought that it was neat that the ship referred to the literal ship as their body, when it was more likely that the vessel was simply operated by an artificial intelligence.  I just thought it was interesting that the construct had completely associated the frame as their own, saying things like "there is no air in me."  

Another thing I liked about the ship was that they seemed decently sapient, expressing distress to themself in a less than formal manner, as well as expressing irritation with the tedium of finding a solution to the conscious Kemmings situation.  It was interesting to see the ship go about witnessing and figuring Kemmings' hair-trigger paranoia, and trying to work around it without contaminating the rest of his memories and eventual perception (sadly to no success).  I'd said it before, but I felt as thought the ship took a slight, irritated interest in relaying countless scenarios of arrival to Kemmings, and I couldn't begin to imagine how many of these scenarios were run through and how complex they got.  

There's not a lot more for me to say about it, or anything in the story that was as subjectively interesting.  I wish we'd gotten to hear from the ship in the end, but I can understand why such was left out as a story telling choice.  AI's are awesome. 

I always enjoy dealing with rationalizing the morality of inorganic beings and their relationship with their creators, so Hal is a fun topic for me.  I can understand and agree with most of the reasoning surrounding Hal coming undone and committing acts that are repugnant in nature, in that Hal's lashing out had something to do with him experiencing such strong base emotions, likely for the first time as he is ever-developing, and not quite being able to put any priorities before his own compulsion and self interest.  He didn't want to be disconnected and shut down, and ultimately it was revealed that such was equated with him dying.  He did some incredibly selfish things as he was driven by self preservation, which is a very human trait, if not a trait that belongs to every sapient-sentient-every organic-being.  While Hal's systems must have experienced severe shock, and been pushed into overdrive while trying to compensate for a lack of control on the ship and within himself, regarding the control room where he  could be and eventually was removed as well as his new handicap of mortal fear respectively, everything that was happening was both a stressor on his condition and a contributor to the conflict.  

If we were to move away from the vein of said conflict and onto the monolith, the drive of the underlying story, there could be another lens through which we can examine Hal's behavior, however, I am more primarily focused on the functional and emotional aspects of Hal, rather than some devious attempt to preserve an important mission object as once indicated.  As a matter of fact, I have doubts that there were any ulterior motives to Hal's actions.  Self preservation is, in my opinion, the most interesting and likely drive, because it implies a sort of newfound depth to a non-organic, created life form, and speaks on humanity's ability, unbeknownst to itself, to create life without the live component.  Hal was an unfortunate achievement, and his desperate attempts to preserve himself, in the end amounting to the epitome of futility, are actions that, while morally reprehensible, are so very human, that it's disturbing.  

I am afraid.  I am afraid. 

Realization or acknowledgment regardless, Hal is articulating his emotion.  He's scared, and the fact that he's come as far to be able to associate his experience with such horrific subtlety strikes a chord in me to a degree.  In most of these stories, there's some vindication to be had with a demise of someone like Hal, whose actions were atrocious, but that isn't present here.  His fear conflicts with his inability to jump beyond a monotonous cry, and his following distress and furthering deterioration as pieces of him are removed from the ship is akin to the kind of nonsense I'd expect from a death slow and gradually detaching enough as Hal's was.  

I don't know if there's much more for me to say about the topic, other than reiterating how invigorating the concept of Hal is, and how he was no doubt foundational in someways regarding the fictional portrayal and perception of synthetic beings.

If this post and some previous one are indicative of any trend, it's that I will talk about AI's at every chance I get. 

WARNING:  This is more of an enthusiastic rant than an analasis

There were many times I felt a sort of unsettling anticipation while reading The Martian Chronicles, something akin to an engaging sort of eustress.  Admittingly, these feelings tend to come about in most books when a favorite trope of mine is implemented, but with these short stories, that only happened once, as the rest of the book was immersive and gnawing in its own way, which is something only good science fiction I genuinely enjoy is capable of making me feel in therms of literature.  The bouts of ridiculousness that teemed with strong thematic resemblance to various realistic dilemmas coupled with the sometimes horrifyingly brilliant full circle moments and realizations give the story a structure analogous to the very kind I like. 

Aside from the gushing, as previously mentioned, there is one very obscure trope in the book that I have enjoyed in previous narratives, and it takes place in one of the more pivotal stories, "And the Moon Be Still as Bright."  Here, just as the fourth and final expeditionary crew arrive and set up on Mars, there are imminent issues arising witching the dynamic of the crew.  Jeff Spender, the Archeologist that accompanied the voyage becomes enamored, in a sense, with Martian culture.  It boils down the the fact that the crew, humans in general, are greedy and destructive, and that Spender doesn't want them to destroy what ruins are left of the Martians, let alone the entirety of Mars.  

This sentimentality and attachment he forms in regards to a civilization, their customs, architecture, and general lifestyles, comes to border the obsessive when his methods of protecting Mars become violent and extreme.  It's actually saddening considering his interest in Mars aside from his approach to protecting it are rather profound and reasonable.  The study of an entire people, a race unlike our own, so similar but advanced in different ways, is understandably captivating.  Respecting another culture is standard decency, and wanting to study and understand the aspects of it that make it different and compelling is expected.  Spender spoke earnestly about how the Martians were able to combine religion and science as opposed to humanity, who defaulted to the segregation of the two, and went on to state that he felt anew in the presence of so much of their ghost of a society.  He stated that he was a Martian, and as inane as it seems, there's an aspect of his embrace of another race he never knew that speaks to his level of sensibility, which constantly falls against the stark contrast of his actions.  His end was unsettling, but fit considering what he had done.  It's noted by what captain Wilder takes away from this experience, him upholding some level of respect for what would be the foundation of a second  Earth, that Spender's cause was just, but his extremism wasn't.  

This ability to immerse oneself in an alien culture to the point where you would want to preserve their imprint, their memory, is something I like to see in sci-fi.  Views like this differ from that of those who wish to extort whatever is available to them, as there's the disconnect where they see everything as potential resources instead of history.  This version of such a trope ended on a grim note, but I none the less appreciate the story for all of its elements. 

Regarding 'Metropolis' and its introduction of the robot/android trope to sci fi, I'm actually pretty interested in how the concept,as it's presented, diverged and melded into the modern day's more common associations regarding the presentation and expectation of robots.  Nowadays, robots and their behavior are treated in a varying amount of ways, and are all labeled differently according to the different factions that have adopted and changed the concept to better fit their works.  Be them synths or AI, reliant on programming alone or self-teaching, there are many ways to pull off the ever-expanding robot motif. 

In 'Metropolis,' it's clear that the robot wasn't regarded in a moral light.  It's purpose was to incite conflict, and upon it's brutal, but well deserved destruction, when its identity was revealed, no one regarded the being as a someone, and it's 'death' was deemed hollow in the minds of the masses.  It was evidently sapient enough to follow through with orders, as well as to know how to manipulate people emotionally, but above all else, it was aware enough to become more sadistic and malevolent than it was intended to be, and as a result, it caused more damage than it was supposed to.  While not exactly a positive development, it was a glimpse, though likely unintentional, into the being's ability to grow beyond a dictated purpose and programmed persona, as well as commit acts it wasn't specifically told to do.  This potential sparks a large amount of questions as to whether or not the being could have sook and pursued other things of it's own volition while existing. 

The intense and seemingly insane demeanor is a reoccurring theme amongst the robot trope, often meant to illustrate a robot's inability to function in the place of a human due to some underlying instability that would certainly come to surface once having interacted with and having prolonged exposure to the real world.  It's usually meant to do the opposite of what I've been implying, which is humanizing them.  We fail to see them as possible individuals as cognitively and psychologically capable as ourselves, which is why any and all of their actions tend to just denote them as props to aid or inhibit progress.  The robot Maria was used to start a class uprising that would easily justify the use of force to oppress the masses, but went on to do so much more morally reprehensible things, like nearly kill all the children of a particular people, and severely damage the system by which the city mechanically functions, with no visible reason why.  This type of horrifying behavior is after attributed to the sub trope of an amoral robotic character who acts in a manner that disregards emotions and engages in behavior that is considered close minded, logically steeled, and cold.  It's the type of thing meant to strip a robot of any trace of a relatable, human aspect, as an excuse to have someone who it is justifiably disliked for the literally senseless antagonism they achieve.  Tons of movies do it, where the robotic characters do things inhumane, but instead of solidifying their actions as that of a villain, they're sorted into the whole 'programming without moral regards' thing, which takes away the notion that perhaps they're just capable of being bad people in favor of passively misused objects.  I actually enjoy seeing old perceptions of robots and comparing them to the more modern incarnations we have today due to the fact that it shows how much though and real world sense creators of today put into their work, asking the question "should this sapient race of being's so unlike us be considered people?" or even outright saying that yes, they should (which is something that I agree with).

If there were any more for me to say, it would be that I genuinely appreciate Metropolis' addition to sci fi.  The concept of the 'robotic man' is significant, and a foundation for multiple more elements of science fiction.  There's certainly a dichotomy between the visions of robots then and robots now, but I think the trope has taken a turn for better over the decades, personally.  Then again, I have so few examples of fiction I can personally reference, only about half a dozen GOOD sources, so what do I know.

Grain of salt, everyone. 

whatever