The 1995 Anime “Ghost in the Shell” is more relevant than ever in today’s technologically complex society

When the anime movie Ghost in the Shell was released in 1995, the world wide web was still little more than a novelty, Microsoft was just beginning to find its GUI-feet, and artificial intelligence research was in the doldrums.

Against this background, Ghost was remarkably prescient for its time. Twenty-three years later, it's even more relevant as we come to grips with advances in human augmentation, AI, and what it means to be human in a technologically advanced future.

Ghost in the Shell is one of twelve science fiction movies that feature in a new book that grapples with the complex intersection between emerging technologies and social responsibility. In Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies (from Mango Publishing), I set out to explore the emerging landscape around transformative trends in technology innovation, and the social challenges and opportunities they present.

The movies in the book were initially selected to help tell a story of technological convergence and socially responsible innovation. But to my surprise, they ended up opening up much deeper insights into the nature of our relationship with technology.

Identity-hacking

Ghost in the Shell opens with cyborg special-operative Major Kusanagi helping track down a talented hacker—aka the "Puppet Master"—who's re-writing people's "ghost", or what makes them uniquely "them", using implanted brain-machine interfaces.

Kusanagi inhabits a world where human augmentation is commonplace, and is almost entirely machine. This technological augmentation provides her and others with super-human abilities. But it also makes them vulnerable—especially to hackers who can effectively re-code their memories. Read the rest