everyone is always connected
background
- released 1999
- blending of cyberspace and reality
impressions
ep 1-3
- connection through powerlines
- relation between technology, life, and death
- ‘drug’ , modifying the human condition and capabilities with technology
- sparsely detailed backgrounds, splattered paint in shadows, surreal
- eerie, paranoia, being watched - “you are not alone”
- Psyche - language around brain and computer intermingled - God, Human, Animal, Machine
- what’s more real, the ‘real world’ or the Wired?
- commentary similar to simulacra (todo)
- “it was like a movie, it didn’t feel real” - real life becomes like 3D projections of the digital
- easily accessible evil and pain enabled by the connectivity of the internet
- a disconnected and distant family
- digital personalities, the side of you that comes out when you’re behind a screen
- a desire to escape
- who is lain?
ep 4: religion! divine machinery ?
- contrasting opening: “humans are not connected to anyone”
- outward naiveness/innocence
- you prefer a machine to your friends?
- ‘you mustn’t confuse (the wired) for the real world”
ep 5: distortion
- woah! distortion of God? fourth wall break
- mankind as “neoteny”? a limit to evolution, technology as a way of unlocking another form of existence
- the Wired as an escape from mankind’s wretched, purposelessness, flesh existence
- apathy towards tragedy
- hackers
- prophecy, history, “connection” of points in time
- the network as lifeline of society - a dependency
- “the body exists only to verify one’s existence”
6-7
- friendship vs isolation
- “the real world isn’t real at all”
- surreal - i like the way lain’s room just progresses in the scattered sequence of shots
8: rumors
- “don’t look away”
- “nobody knows what’s fun and why”
- purposelessness
- what is up with her family???
- fragmented
- “God” as someone that exists everywhere in the world
- “you are just a body” - a hologram of the real digital you
- the scene of everyone watching her - very unsettling
- her friend as her one anchor to the physical world
- wow! very unsettling episode
- who is lain? “the wired’s information should be shared”
- questioning self-awareness, consciousness
- deleting memory - another mixture of computer and psychological language
- reminding me of perfect blue, omniscient reader
9: Protocol
- “if you want to be free of suffering, you should believe in god”
- mj-12 , roswell?
- MEMEX
- John C. Lilly
- memory manipulation
- information vs. truth
- ted nelson, xanadu
- earth’s electromagnetic field as brain waves - earth as having consciousness
- network connection of humanity
- worldwide neural network, schumann resonance
10: love