I wouldn't call it prescient. It came out in 1998? At that time, I was already living like Lain, cooped up in my room spending my entire evening/night online,

I wouldn't call it prescient. It came out in 1998? At that time, I was already living like Lain, cooped up in my room spending my entire evening/night online, building computers and tinkering with stuff. Lots of people were already like that. In fact, it just accurately represented a person like that, who's an outlier in their obsessive interest in the net and online communities. I felt huge relation to Lain when I watched it at that time. It was "current" for me. I imagine many others felt this way as well, though probably not the article author :)