Ghost in the Shell

The Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex paints a near future world with expected improvements in machine-human interfaces to the point of leaving only the smallest portion of the 'old me' to nurture a ghost or spirit of each individual human. To be perfectly fair, the AI's also had souls - that portion of their almost unlimited networked extent. Somewhere between a hard boot of a collection of known parts. Each part in this point of view at some point meets a boundary where, by convention, the cosmic environment beyond the membrane of the thing in itself. The thing standing alone and apart, seperated by a line of demarcation between what is this thing and what is not this thing. Stand alone complex.

Even though explanations eventually fail, math and well behaved experience shed light on the dark places. The bald fact that we know only what we know and nothing else disturbs us. This feeling that someone is watching us and keeping tabs on the accidents caused by not knowing and the accidents where I should have known better based upon reflections about earlier, similar incidents.