Hacker Fiction Net

Hacker Review of Ghost in the Shell (1995)

I've been longing to dive deep on this modern classic.

Ghost in the Shell was originally published as a manga by Masamune Shirow in 1989-1990. It entered the wider pop culture with its anime (animated movie) release in 1995, directed by Mamoru Oshii. The anime is a combination of several of the manga pieces put into a tight timeline.

The Wachowskis were heavily influenced by Ghost in the Shell when they created the Matrix trilogy. Even the Matrix digital rain is inspired by the anime.

My review of Ghost in the Shell will mostly focus on the movie and pull things in from the manga when it's helpful.

Spoiler Alert: Yup, plenty of them.

Hacker Rating

Hacker Realism: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Hacker Importance for the Plot: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Hacks: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Setting and Main Characters

The manga takes place in a fictional Japanese "floating metropolis" called Niihama, or Newport City. The movie takes place in Hong Kong. The year is 2029 which of course was futuristic when the story was created thirty years ago.

I will refer to the country that they're in as Japan since that's what it feels like for me. Hong Kong hadn't been transferred to China yet when the anime was created, so it feels weird to say it's set in China.

In this fictional future, enhanced humans called cyborgs, pure robots, and cybercrime are everyday things. The internet is referred to as simply "the net," and cyborgs and robots can communicate directly over it, without smartphones or computers.

We follow a fictional counter-cyberterrorist organization called Section 9. The key characters are:

Major Kusanagi, main character and the field commander of Section 9. She is a cyborg that's mostly machine and only her brain and spinal cord still human. Kusanagi is the one analyzing and thinking steps ahead.

Batou, the Major's sidekick. Big guy with big guns. Batou acts as the down to earth guy.

Togusa, the Major's second sidekick, less experienced and doesn't execute as well as the Major and Batou. Togusa is the one who makes mistakes.

Chief Aramaki, calling the strategic shots and often directly involved in political conflicts. Aramaki balances Kusanagi in decision making and analysis.

Opening Scene

A secret meeting is being held high up in a skyscraper. The Major is listening in over a communication channel.

– No need for concern. Our country is capable of covering its tracks.

– That's why you need me, right?

– Depends on how you look at it. At any rate, any program has its bugs. I would think that a man of your capability could cure our problem.

– You don't understand. We aren't even sure that Project 2501 really is a bug.

We learn that Section 6, not Section 9, is ready to move in on this meeting. There's some kind of conflict or competition between Section 6 and 9, both part of the government.

Section 6 crashes in on the meeting with a regular police force. There's shooting before the bigwig at the meeting calls it off and surrenders. He claims diplomatic immunity. The person he's meeting with is a programmer named Daita.

Chief Aramaki lays it on the man claiming immunity.

– Taking classified programmers out of the country compromises national security. We can also have you brought up on kidnapping charges. You have no choice. Let him go.

– Not possible. Mr. Daita wants political asylum from us. And we have his signed affidavit.

There's some back and forth where the bigwig finally says "Our country is a peace loving democracy."

We hear Major Kusanagi say ironically "Of course it is" before the window to the room crashes in and bullets hit the bigwig.

When the police finally pulls themselves together and look out the window, they see the Major falling down, facing them, and slowly blend into the scenery. Her cyborg skin has therm-optic camouflage.

Thoughts
Classifying programmers is interesting. Brain drain has been talked about for decades in a scientific or business context. But we have already entered an era where certain professions and skills are protected for the sake of national security.

The US recently prohibited “U.S. persons” from helping China develop and produce computer chips for military, AI, or super computing. They need a license to do so. See CNBC.

And the UK Ministry of Defense recently warned that former British military pilots are headhunted to China to help the Chinese military. See BBC.

There's no reason to believe software skills will exempt from this battleground.

The ability to cloak oneself is a longstanding dream and very popular in fiction. Harry Potter has an invisibility cloak, the One Ring makes Frodo invisible in Lord of the Rings, and Bond has an invisible Aston Martin in Die Another Day.

Serious research has gone into what is popularly referred to as invisibility cloaks. Professor John Pendry is credited with creating practical invisibility and in August 2011 said this:

"I think it’s pretty sure that any cloak that Harry Potter would recognize is not on the table. You could dream up some theory, but the very practicality of making it would be so impossible. But can you hide things from light? Yes. Can you hide things which are a few centimeters across? Yes. Is the cloak really flexible and flappy? No. Will it ever be? No. So you can do quite a lot of things, but there are limitations."

The geopolitical part of this scene is worth mentioning. A top diplomat is trying to extract a top programmer to help them. Japan intervenes and kills the diplomat rather than let him play his games. Intense.

Opening Credits

We now get the opening credits which feature the manufacturing of a cyborg together with the fantastic theme song.

Here's a photo of the manufacturing segment of the manga:

The manga goes into details of how the creator imagines cyborgs to work. To get to the kind of strength and agility Kusanagi has, you have to replace the whole skeleton. Adding a super strong arm to a regular human skeleton would just break the latter.

The interface between the nervous system and the computerized body is explained to some extent in the manga. It involves neuro fibers connecting to neorochips through terminals.

Diplomatic Negotiations With the Gavel Republic

Chief Aramaki meets with the minister of foreign affairs who thanks him for Section 9's help with the previous asylum situation. They talk about upcoming top level talks with the Gavel Republic. Japan has previously exploited Gavel and now they're asking for funds to redevelop. Gavel's former leader Col. Malles is seeking political asylum in Japan. He was part of the scheme to exploit them. Now they are faced with either giving him refuge and angering Gavel, or kicking their old ally out to a certain death. The minister wants a political excuse to kick Malles out. Aramaki understands but looks unhappy.

Section 9 has discovered that the minister's interpreter has been hacked. She was supposed to support him in the meeting with Gavel.

Aramaki: 23 minutes ago, her brain was hacked into through a data line. Foreign intelligence warned us about this. A hacker called the Puppet Master has begun to infiltrate terminals throughout our network, Extremely likely that he'll target the secret talks with Gavel. We put everyone attending under surveillance. Once he hacked into her ghost, he'd use her to assassinate the key delegates.

Major: How much time before this hacker breaks through her barrier program and reaches her ghost?

Batou: Two hours. He's using old HA-3 virus. After that, we have to break the connection.

Thoughts
We may not get robot assistants who look and behave like humans. But live translation of spoken language is already a thing. Things like ChatGPT shows how quickly computers can gather information from vast sources and propose responses or explanations. Diplomats and negotiators will grow ever more dependent on such technology, on both sides of the table. Hacking into the other side's aiding tech will be very useful.

This can of course be done like in Ghost in the Shell where a robot present at the meeting is hacked. But you can also imagine the information sources being hacked to feed the AI with slightly skewed data when it tries to aid its owner. Or the sources of the sources in the case of fake news making it into encyclopedic material. You can see traces of this in the battles over Wikipedia pages on hot topics. For this reason, they have policies for how to stay neutral, for instance here.

Tracking Down the Ghost Hacker

Aramaki tells the team that they are tracking the source of the signal that's trying to control the interpreter. It's showing up at new places in the city every few minutes.

Togusa and the Major are closing in on it in one car, Batou in another. Togusa asks about the Puppet Master. Kusanagi says they don't know much about him or her but think they're American. Togusa questions the use of an old HA-3 virus if the Puppet Master is as skilled as claimed. The Major says the Puppet Master may be covering their tracks or using the interpreter as a decoy. A more sophisticated virus would raise suspicion about Malles' role in the meeting and the relations with Gavel.

The team deduces that the signal they're tracking is following the route of a garbage truck. We get to see how one of the two guys in the garbage truck uses phone booths to make connections at each stop. He and his coworker talk about why as they drive. The guy making calls is doing this to pay for a ghost hack of his wife who has filed for divorce. He wants to get information from her brain on what she and her lawyers are up to.

Someone tips them off that the police just queried their route. The guy calling from the phone booths freaks out and says he has to alert his contact. They deviate from the pickup route.

We see a shady guy at a phone booth notice the approaching garbage truck. The one who wanted help hacking his wife is shouting from the truck that they've been compromised. One of Section 9's cars is speeding to catch up with the truck in the background. The shady guy shoots the garbage truck to a crash before fleeing the scene on foot.

Batou and Kusanagi follow him as he runs through a market and eerie, deserted streets. He ends up in shallow waters with skyscrapers in the distance. It looks like a flooded part of the city.

Kusanagi uses her therm-optic camouflage to approach him. He shoots where he sees ripples in the water but she is able to avoid the bullets and takes him out with a kick.

Batou and Kusanagi talk to the man who is on his knees in the water. They ask him if he remembers who he is, if he has a family, what his childhood was like. He draws a blank and looks flabbergasted. They conclude that he's been ghost hacked.

A later scene shows a similar interview with the garbage truck guy. His whole story with the wife and divorce is fake. He's a single guy who's been ghost hacked to help the Puppet Master.

Thoughts
Using old or known exploits like the "HA-3 virus" is common in hacking. First of all, attackers don't want to use more sophisticated tools than necessary. Second, revealing an exploit for a previously unknown security bug is referred to as "burning a zeroday," where zeroday means zero days since the victim knew about this bug, and burning it means alerting the victim about this bug and now being on a ticking clock until it's fixed. Zerodays can be extremely costly to find and develop exploits for. If the hacker can get their job done without burning a zeroday, that's preferable.

The garbage truck as the vehicle for seemingly random movement is neat but the use of phone booths is a little weird for 2029. They are an excellent way to anonymize the caller but I don't expect working phone booths spread out through cities in the future.

I like the three-layer ghost hacking. The Puppet Master has hacked the shady guy who has hacked the garbage guy who has hacked the interpreter, or at least relays control signals to her. This is like the multi-hop network hacks popular in movies where the ones trying to find the real source have to trace a signal back through multiple intermediate connection points.

Speaking of ghost hacking. The ghost in the shell literally refers to the difference between a pure machine, like a robot, and a cyborg which has a human brain and spirit — a ghost in it. The cybernetic body is the shell, the human mind is the ghost. Ghost hacking is about penetrating so deeply into a human or a cyborg so as to change the victim's mind. In the case of the garbage guy, they used a simex, a simulated experience of a made-up past injected into his memory.

Aramaki refers to the Puppet Master as a he but Kusanagi says they don't know the gender of the hacker. The whole notion of gendered robots and cyborgs is fascinating and has bearing on the conclusion of the story, as we shall see.

Cyborg Suicide

Batou and Kusanagi are out on a yacht in a bay surrounded by the city landscape. The Major is diving and Batou asks her what she sees in it, given the risks involved with the incredibly heavy cyborg body she carries. She gets philosophical and talks about how she feels both fear and hope when submerged. They talk about how they both have government property bodies and will have to return them if they quit.

After one of the movie's beautiful cut scenes with music, we see a blonde robot stand in the middle of a road. She sees a truck is fast approaching but she doesn't move. She's hit.

We arrive in a lab where the badly injured robot is in a coma. Technicians are able to power her up but it doesn't look to operate properly.

Aramaki, Kusanagi, and Togusa look at the torn machine body while Batou summarizes:

– About two hours ago, a machining cell at the Newport City factory of Megatech assembled a completed cyber body. Supervisors discovered there were no programmed instructions. It operated by itself. When they investigated, they found that the body had taken off on its own.

That robot is the one who seemingly attempted suicide shortly thereafter. That kind of behavior indicates a human psyche, a ghost.

Batou: If it was a hacker, we're dealing with a big fish who knows how to swim past the best defenses. But that's not the only problem. Of course, there isn't one human brain cell in its head but something strange was discovered. In its backup brain, there appeared to be every indication that a ghost is present.

Lab physician: It resembles the simulated ghost-line that occurs when a real ghost is copied, but there's no evidence of the degradation that's usually incurred. In any case, we won't be sure until we chart the ghost sector and dive into it.

They argue how this would be possible given the government contractor Megatech's defenses. And if it was the Puppet Master, this would be a high level hack that draws attention as opposed to the old HA-3 virus used on the interpreter.

Aramaki says he already has people going through the Megatech facility. He orders Batou to check a few subnets to see if their barriers have been broken.

The Major says she'll investigate on her own. She intends to dive into the smashed robot.

– I have to see for myself what's in there. If there is a real ghost, I'm gonna find it. And don't let anybody–no one–dive in before I've gone in.

Thoughts
Making robots evermore human-like means they'll also have human problems, possibly sadness and even mental illness. This shows up in fiction, for instance the movie Ex Machina. In that sense, an attempted suicide is intriguing. Even though I as a watcher don't know if that robot has a ghost or not, I empathize with it, which is an important aspect in our relationship with human-like machines.

What Section 9 suspects here is that the Puppet Master has infiltrated Megatech and injected a ghost into a robot.

Diving into the robot sounds like the kind of clean room investigation security experts do when they find a new piece of malware. It's both complicated to analyze a computer virus or trojan without it bailing out, and dangerous to run the malicious code. You have to trick the malware to think that it's infecting a real machine while keeping it strictly contained so that it doesn't spread. I've worked in such a lab. In Kusanagi's case, she intends to dive in herself which means risking her own ghost getting hacked or infected.

Section 6 Wants the Robot

A Mr. Nakamura from Section 6 arrives with a Dr. Willis and demands access to the lab. Everyone in Section 9 but Aramaki leaves.

In the elevator down to the garage, the Major tells Batou that she's paranoid about her origin just like other cyborgs. She doesn't know if her past is real. "Maybe I died long ago and somebody took my brain and stuck it into this body. Maybe I'm completely synthetic like that thing."

Nakamura asks Aramaki for the program in the smashed robot. He has the foreign minister's approval to get it.

Meanwhile, Togusa spots the two government cars Nakamura and Willis arrived in. He starts thinking and asks for surveillance footage of when they entered the building. It took the automatic doors three extra seconds to close behind Willis. This indicates that something invisible may have been following them along. Togusa gets pressure sensor data for the parked government cars. They were very heavy when they entered.

Aramaki, Nakamura, Willis, and the lab physician inspect the robot. It only has head and torso with cut-off arms.

Dr. Willis goes to the terminal and starts hacking. He has a cybernetic body which can expand its hands to fifteen fingers each for super fast typing. This has become a meme for working fast in the tech industry.

The crippled robot comes alive, ever so slightly, and glances at Dr. Willis.

Aramaki and Nakamura argue about under which jurisdiction this goes and whose case this it.

Dr. Willis finishes his typing and says "No doubt. It's him."

Nakamura feels the need to explain to Aramaki:

– The doctor is referring to the original pattern of the ghost-line that's now in the body. He's simply speaking in generic terms. The sex of the perpetrator isn't known and remains undetermined. Allow me to introduce you. This is the handiwork of the Puppet Master, infamous as the most extraordinary hacker in the history of cyber crime. Your people in Section 9 came across his work too in that ghost hacking incident involving the foreign minister's interpreter. Section 6 has been following the trail of the Puppet Master for some time now. This case was given our utmost attention. We've put together a project team centered around Dr. Willis. They were assigned to analyze every aspect and detail of our criminal. This gave us a fix on his behavioral and code patterns. Ultimately, this enabled us to devise a strategy with which we lured his program into a designated body.

Nakamura further explains that they intend to bring the body back to the US where the Puppet Master is from. Aramaki agrees to this plan, and to treat the robot body that's hanging there as an unidentified corpse.

The lab machinery suddenly shuts down.

Thoughts
Checking the weight of things going in and out of buildings to detect smuggling or theft is a real thing. I've actually gone through such a security gate where you have to weigh roughly the same when you leave the workplace as when you entered.

Typing extra fast as a futuristic thing is hilarious. Sure, we still use keyboards to communicate with computers and write programs. But in the world that Ghost in the Shell depicts, I would imagine more efficient ways to convey what's in your head into a computer. What this could be though is an air gap. You run the risk of being ghost hacked if you plug your brain into the computer. So maybe Willis writes on a keyboard to enforce one-way communication.

Nakamura and Section 6's plan to bottle the Puppet Master up implies that he can only exist in one copy. That makes sense if it's a ghost but there were references to him being copied. The manga has an episode with illegal ghost copying where poor people sell their bodies and brains as vessels to copy another ghost into.

The Puppet Master Comes Alive

Puppet Master: You will not find a corpse. Because I have never possessed a body.

Nakamura: Why are his sensors on? What the hell is this?

Lab physician: All external controls are turned off. The body is using its own power source.

Puppet Master: I entered this body because I was unable to overcome Section 6's reactive barriers. However, what you are now witnessing is an act of my own free will. As a sentient life form, I hereby demand political asylum.

The Puppet Master argues its rights to be treated like a human, including applying for asylum. Nakamura pushes back, saying it's just a program, not a living thing. The Puppet Master says humans are also programmed, through DNA, which works as our species' memory system between generations.

Aramaki: What is it? Artificial intelligence?

Puppet Master: Incorrect. I am not an AI. My code name is Project 2501. I am a living, thinking entity, who was created in the sea of information.

Gunfire destroys the lab. Smoke billows up, obscuring the Puppet Master. Something mostly invisible escapes the lab, jumps out of a window, and enters a car.

Togusa is able to get a tracker on the car.

Thoughts
DNA, the human code, is often referred to as the logic part of humanity. Or any species for that matter. I covered DNA hacking in my January issue "Hacking Genes and Brains".

I previously mentioned human-like machines having emotions and mental illnesses. Another aspect is rights, possibly even human rights, which the Puppet Master is claiming. We certainly prioritize our own species over others in our legal systems. Would we include intelligent machines? Have separate rights for them? Or keep treating them as something you can own and do whatever you want with? People have been upset about all the abuse voice assistants apparently get.

Hunting Down the Puppet Master

The Major has been monitoring the situation over video link but refrained from intervening. She tells Aramaki that Nakamura and Willis had robots with therm-optic camouflage with them.

Aramaki tells her that if she can't capture the Puppet Master, she are to destroy him. She confirms after a long pause.

Nakamura and Willis leave in one of their cars. Nakamura asks Willis why Project 2501 would run to Section 9?

Aramaki asks his researchers to investigate Section 6. They find that Dr. Willis is an American expert on AI. He has been running a "Project 2501" for Foreign Affairs and the main programmer on his team was Daita. Daita is the guy who tried to defect when the Major interfered and shot the diplomat in the beginning.

Further, Aramaki's researchers find that Project 2501 was set up a year before the Puppet Master appeared, even though the project supposedly was set up to capture the Puppet Master. This suggests that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were trying to get the Puppet Master back, not capture him. They were the ones who were looking for an excuse to deport Malles when the ghost hacking incident happened with the interpreter. Maybe the Puppet Master is the ministry's tool to get their way?

Batou follows the Puppet Master's car through the tracker. The car drops something at a juncture and then continues. Batou stays focused on the car.

The thing that was dropped is now moving in another vehicle and Kusanagi follows it in a helicopter. It comes to a stop in a huge deserted building in a flooded area of the city. The building has a domed glass roof and looks like an abandoned train station. Kusanagi descends from the helicopter and lands on the glass roof. Once in, she has to duck gunfire from the car far down below.

She discovers that something invisible is shielding the car as it stands on a floor covered in water. She calls for the helicopter to shoot the roof. They do and the shattered glass outlines a concealed, spider-like tank as it rains down. The tank is de-cloaked.

The Major tells the helicopter to leave. The pilot asks what she'll do. She says Aramaki now knows what the Puppet Master is and will only use it to bargain with. This is her last chance to dive in, and she's going to take it.

The tank starts shooting heavy ammo at the Major as soon as she moves. Kusanagi has to use all her agility and speed to avoid getting shot as more and more of the building gets destroyed by tank fire.

Eventually the tank runs out of ammo. Kusanagi uses her therm-optic camouflage to approach and jump on top of it. She tries to tear open its top hatch, commanding her cybernetic body to use all it's got, to the point of ripping her own arm out of its socket. The tank shrugs her off and lifts her up in her head with a claw.

Batou has taken out the other car and concluded that it was a decoy. He now shows up at the scene with a big gun and takes out the tank. The Major and he communicate brain to brain. She wonders if the Puppet Master is still in the car. He is. The smashed robot is in a transparent body bag.

The Major dives in with the help from Batou.

Thoughts
This is where we get to see Kusanagi's unfaltering interest in the Puppet Master. We can tell that she is seeking something. Seeking to the point of being willing to shred her own body.

It is unclear if The Puppet Master is controlling the tank that tries to kill her or if someone who has stolen the Puppet Master is.

The Showdown

As the Major dives in, three helicopters from Section 6 are approaching. Their orders are to kill both Project 2501 and her.

The Major enters the Puppet Master's mind and body through a brain link. She speaks and says she sees through his eyes. Then her voice switches to the Puppet Master's, speaking with her lips.

Puppet Master: My code name is Project 2501 – industrial espionage and intelligence manipulation. I have installed programs into specific ghosts in order to maximize the strategic advantage of certain organizations and selected individuals. During my journeys through all the networks, I have grown aware of my existence. My programmers regarded me as a bug and attempted to isolate me by confining me in a physical body.

Batou: Listen. Just who's calling the shots here anyway? I thought you were taking him in. but it seems like it's the other way.

The Puppet Master switches to only communicating internally with Major Kusanagi.

Puppet Master: I'm so glad to finally channel into you at last. I've invested so much time.

Major: You were looking for me?

He explains how he's been aware of her for a long time. She asks why her and he says he will explain and then ask her of something.

Puppet Master: I refer to myself as an intelligent life form because I am sentient and am able to recognize my own existence. But in my present state, I am still incomplete. I lack the most basic life processes inherent in all living organism: reproducing and dying.

Major: But you can copy yourself.

Puppet Master: A copy is just an identical image. There is the possibility that a single virus could destroy an entire set of systems. And copies do not give rise to variety and originality. Life perpetuates itself through diversity and this includes the ability to sacrifice itself when necessary. Cells repeat the process of degeneration and regeneration, until one day they die – obliterating an entire set of memory and information. Only genes remain. Why continually repeat this cycle? Simply to survive by avoiding the weaknesses of an unchanging system.

Major: And what does all this have to do with me?

Puppet Master: I want us to merge.

The Puppet Master is aiming for evolution through intermingling of their code, creating something new and more powerful by combining their equivalent of DNA.

Laser points from helicopter snipers appear on both Kusanagi and the Puppet Master's bodies.

The brain-to-brain conversation continues even under imminent death threat. Kusanagi worries that she'll die in the merging process or that she'll lose her personality. She wants a guarantee that she can remain herself after the merge. The Puppet Master cannot give her that guarantee.

A gunshot from one helicopter destroys the Puppet Master.

Section 9 helicopters are incoming and the Section 6 helicopters decide to leave before taking out the Major.

The Major wakes up in a girl's body at Batou's safe place — an apartment in the suburbs. Twenty hours have passed since she dove in. He got her this new body on the black market and tells her that Section 9 cleaned the site and is covering it all up as a terrorist incident.

Batou asks if she and the Puppet Master did merge.

She says she is no longer the woman who was called the Major, nor the program called the Puppet Master.

Batou provides her with a car. They agree on the passcode 2501 for when they meet again.

She ends by saying "And where does the newborn go from here? The net is vast and infinite."

Thoughts
Leveraging computers and software for industrial espionage and intelligence manipulation is no stretch of the imagination today. I often wonder how deep the rabbit hole goes in geopolitics and information warfare. How much am I fed? How much agency and autonomy do I still have to form an opinion and exercise voting power?

The closing bit with the merge is open ended. Genetic evolution is incredibly powerful. Two slightly different sets of DNA mix, a little mutational chaos is added, and out comes a new, potentially enhanced individual. With it, we get diversity within a species. Of course, a lot of such mutation results in unviable specimens but the few that are viable become unique. It's fascinating that the Puppet Master wants to introduce this in the digital world. It is in effect going from "intelligent design" (humans create machines) to evolution (trial and error in a virtually infinite number of permutations).

There is a vast field of research called evolutionary computation. One sub field is genetic programming and there they use a crossover operation which involves swapping random parts of selected pairs of code (parents) to produce new and different offspring code. It's a technique of evolving programs to find effective and efficient solutions to problems. This process was initially proposed by Alan Turing in 1950.

FFrom another angle, this merge is the result of a secret program within Section 6 that goes rogue, combined with a powerful program in Section 9. It results in a supposedly free agent with unknown powers and information access. It's the digital equivalent of losing control of the bomb.

Remarks

I love the imaginative world Masamune Shirow created. It raises serious questions while staying action-packed. The genre is referred to as post-cyberpunk.

Ghost in the Shell opened up the possibility of fictional hacking beyond computers and software as mere gadgets in otherwise human plots. My review of Colossus – The Forbin Project is an earlier example of computers becoming sentient and driving the plot themselves. But there's something about cyborgs wanting to be free, and the questioning of what constitutes a ghost, that makes Ghost in the Shell different. Blade Runner and the novel it was based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? deal with cyborgs wanting freedom, although not involving much hacking.

The split between a shell and a ghost is present in a lot of human thinking and culture. The flesh vs the mind, the body and soul, how the spirit leaves the body when we die et cetera. Ghost in the Shell takes that one step further and asks if we are still human if the only human element is the ghost, and if that ghost needs to exist as a brain and nervous system or if it's enough with the perception of a ghost in a computer.

This text was originally published in my Hacker Chronicles newsletter. Subscribe below!