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> All that was missing was Wintermute. I'm here! More seriously, the formation/actions of Anonymous remind me of the stand alone complexes (more formally term
by w1ntermute 16y ago
> All that was missing was Wintermute.
I'm here!
More seriously, the formation/actions of Anonymous remind me of the stand alone complexes (more formally termed "second-order simulacra," in semiotics) from Ghost in the Shell, one of the greatest cyberpunk anime series out there. It's astonishing that Shiro Masamune was able to predict this occurence as a result of the growth of the internet, and even more astonishing that it happened ~20 years before he predicted, prior to the existence of cyberbrains or synthetic "ghosts."
- sp332 16y ago4chan was the perfect environment for something like Anonymous to occur. With no (official) archive, individual posts don't survive long. But you can get "ripples" of comments to persist for a while by a) re-posting it incessantly or b) creating an idea that other people want to repeat (basically a meme). Over time, the surviving memes created a sort of "standing wave" or self-replicating system out of channers' brains. I guess what I'm saying is, Anonymous is the cumulative effect of these strong memes on human brains. The Ghost in the Shell is on a substrate of part-internet, part-human.