https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZX58fDhebc
The scene above was by far my favorite scene. It is when the half robot on the table is inhabited by the Puppet Master and he basically begins to reveal what life is in his mind. He states his own answer to so many of the questions that we talk about in this class and starts to go on about life: “Life has become more complex than an overwhelming sea of information.” I just enjoyed this quote. “It can also be argued that DNA is nothing more than a program designed to preserve itself.” Here instead of comparing a robot to a human in human terms, he dehumanizes DNA and makes it seem more like something possessed by robots or computers. “Man is an individual only because of his intangible memory.” here he states that memory is the only thing that distinguishes us from each other and without a memory we are not human. This reminds me of Blade Runner and how it was so important for the AI’s to have a memory so they would feel more human and act more human. What else besides memory distinguishes us from each other? Our memories are the reason why we act a certain way, they are who we are and within our memories are stored our values and beliefs and how we came to them. So maybe all that distinguishes us from each other besides physical details is our memory. Our way of thinking can also be attributed to our memory. We think that way because we grew up that way and because our brain learned and picked up on certain things and stored them a certain way…in our memory.
Also in this scene it begins with someone who seems very human from the first glance and then his hands take themselves apart and type into the computer at the fastest rate I have ever scene it just blew my mind.
One of the favorite parts of this scene was the puppet master’s claim that he was born of the “sea of information”; an analogy reminiscent of Athena being born from the head of Zeus. As the film progresses; the puppet master becomes concerned with the idea of mortality in order to experience life; eventually merging with the Kusanagi in order to do so. A interesting approach to the puppet master’s desire for mortality would be to view it as an absence of information – by not knowing when we are to die; we are subject to a crucial piece of information that could crucially alter our change in life. Barring the logical paradoxes of such knowledge, it’s interesting that the puppet master’s sheer desire is to escape his nature as an all-knowing entity.
This self-negation relates to Hegel’s infamous master-slave dialectic; in which existence is justified by successful negation of one’s surroundings, thus proving one’s individual identity. Thus, death for the puppet master becomes a successful self-negation as he is able to differ himself from the programs around him; by ascribing a known uncertainty to the circumstances of his death.
I was also fascinated by this scene. The Puppet Master’s answer echoes my own thoughts when I watched “Blade Runner.” The boundary that demarcates human and non-human seems to have no solid rationale behind it, either in “Blade Runner” or in “Ghost in the Shell.” The Puppet Master is essentially saying that humans think we are human because we have a unique genetic makeup, but what makes us think that our DNA is special? Humans don’t get to choose what our DNA is, nor do we get to choose what kind of person we are. Therefore, to say that the Puppet Master is not human just because he is a program does not make sense if the program is sentient. A program has a DNA equivalent: coding.
I also think the merging process leads to some interesting questions. If both parties lose their individual identity when they fuse, is the resulting consciousness an individual? Is it two halves, or one unified whole? This is the same question that Neuromancer had, and it brings into focus the issue of identity. If something has its own unique identity and then merges with another unique identity, did that unique identity die, or did it merely change? I suppose that that question will never have a definite answer.