Inner_Realms

The theme of the conscious computer is of great importance in the dystopic city. Many of these futuristic urban settings rely on a computer system as a central network for governance. This again, leads to a fear of a loss of control for the inhabitants, but further, the fear of the system malfunctioning or developing a level of self-awareness, such that human decision making is lost completely. A twist on this theme, however, arises in Appleseed, where the council of elders for the city of Olympus, begin making decisions themselves, after having shut down the central computer system, which ultimately, would be the only safe-guard against their plans for mass genocide of the human race. A more common image of these films, however, is the inverse situation, where lives are put at stake, in the face of a calculated (or errored) computer decision, that ultimately puts human life into a simple, quantitative value system, making the city's biological inhabitants expendible.

The transference of information between the human mind, and a technological or computerized system, has long been an idea taken with great apprehension. This notion of absolute cross-over between human existence and machine, speaks of a feared post-modernity, relating to an inversion of creator, and created. The apparent environment in which we live can no longer be accepted as true, or constant, as the possibilites for hallucinatory or illusory environments expands infinitely, with a constant feedback between thought, memory, and imaginary space. The films above, look at the what many may value most, being there own sense of reality, and their own consciousness, and how these might be completely removed, with a coming fusion of our mental nature, and a virtual realm.

With this fusion of nature and technology, comes the subsequent amalgamation of being with the cybernetic city. This may be a choice of survival, as with the once-human cyborg Briarios of Appleseed, or a hallucinatory nightmare as in Videodrome or Akira. Ultimately, however, one calls into question the position of one's 'being', or soul, as they are to merge with the environs. The martyrdom of Neo, in The Matrix Revolutions, suggests a possible fusion of spirit and machine, but the ultimate whereabouts of his new form remains unknown. The film suggests that there is no escape from one's final fate. Ironically, then, it is this fusion with technology that emphasizes our own humanity, through our natural and immanent mortality.