According to wikipedia web pages here, here, and here: "... Ghost in the Shell ... is a Japanese science fiction manga created by Masamune Shirow.
As to Japan around the 1930s, the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1987 print edition) says: "... under the peace-preservation laws of 1928, a special police corps was established to seek out "dangerous thoughts". Economically, the urban classes were dependent upon the continuation of the favorable trade patterns of the 1920s. ... the Great Depression ... wrecked ... Japan's markets in China ... assassins' success in publicizing ... the virtues they claimed to embody had a considerable importance in the 1930s ... junior military officers ... contemptuous of the urban luxuries of politicians ...[ took ]... part in disorder so great that military government would follow ...". According to a fact-index web page: "... Inukai Tsuyoshi ... was ... the 26th Prime Minister ... Inukai's assassination by young naval officers in Tokyo on May 15, 1932 was a key event in Japanese history, known as the go ichi go jiken (May 15 incident). It marked the end of party political control over government decisions until after World War II. ...". According to a tutorgig web page: "... Eleven young Naval Officers ... attempted a coup d'etat, attacking the prime minister's residence. This act was one of the main reasons Japan's party-based government ended. After this the military became an influential voice in the ruling of the country until the end of the Second World War. The eleven were court martialed and at the end of the trial a petition containing 350,000 signatures was collected in favor of a reduction of the sentence from death. 11 severed fingers were also sent to the court house as well as it was traditional in ancient Japan to cut off the little finger of the left hand as a punishment for a crime. This ensured that the ... criminal would be unable to hold a sword properly. ...".
As to 2030 according to 2nd Gig, there had been two 21st century wars leading to the unification of Taiwan and China and a refugee population in Japan. Kusanagi's Section 9 (a "special police corps"), after exposing corporate/political corruption, is assigned to protect the Prime Minister from assassination, including an attempt by sword in a temple, while Kazuto Goda, a Taiwan-born soldier/policeman, inhabits the internet web, attempts to provoke conflict with the refugees and to promote civil rights for robot androids, uses a group called [the 11 other people] and sends a box of 11 fingers to the Prime Minister. According to Chinese Calligraphy, by Eduardo Fazzioli (Abbeville Press 1987, page 30): the "... ideogram ...[ + ]... "ten" ...[ with ]... base ...[ _ ]... added to symbolize the number "one" ... was intended to represent everything contained between one and ten, the beginning and ending of numbering, and therefore ...[ + would symbolize ]... all the knowledge available to man ...". ]
According to Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow (a pseudonym) (Dark Horse Comics 1991-1995): "... Megatech Machine ... The making of a cyborg ... partial cyborgization can only supplement a human's innate abilities. Total cyborgization,however, can create abilities that may exceed those of a human ... ... we can add a variety of optional equipment to a mass-produced model - - the way you were created, Motoko - - or we can create a custom model, as we'ere doing here ... like you, she's 16^2 ... 16^2 indicates that the micromachines ... are extremely tiny ... The code number's the header on Vivaldi RV256 in an eight-second series ...". Motoko Kusanagi
(The image is from a Stand Alone Complex DVD. The Russian/Latin subtitle (the "j" could have been transliterated as "y") means "Watch in Awe, Fly in Glory". )
has a cyborg body that makes her a physical weapon like the Sword Kusanagi. Her body does not contain an ovary-uterus reproductive system,
(The image is from the Ghost in the Shell DVD.)
but
(The image is from the Ghost in the Shell DVD.)
is female in shape, including a vagina and breasts. Although Motoko's breasts do not function to nourish children, they are do more than make her female shape attractive and produce sensual pleasure.
(The image is from the Ghost in the Shell DVD.)
Their inner structure is that of the left and right hemispheres of a second brain (similar to dolphin brains). Their structure might be a hybrid of silicon/carbon quantum computers and biological brain-tissue quantum computers.
According to a 23 October 2004 wired.com article by Lakshmi Sandhana: "... 25,000 disembodied rat neurons ... are growing on top of a multi-electrode array[imagefrom animat paper ] and form a living "brain"
that's hooked up to a flight simulator on a desktop computer. When information on the simulated aircraft's horizontal and vertical movements are fed into the brain by stimulating the electrodes, the neurons fire away in patterns that are then used to control its "body" - the simulated aircraft. ...". As jfarnold commented on 23 October 2004 on slashdot:
Motoko's multiple brains enable her to see the Possible Worlds
(The image is from the Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface (issue 11 of 11).)
of the MacroSpace of Many-Worlds ( which is the hidden spirit world of O-Kuni-Nushi ) with a sort of depth perception that is not available to single-brain humans.
Compare Douglas Adams's description of many Possible Worlds in the book "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide" ( Chapter 17 of Mostly Harmless ) (Random House 1997):
"... there was now a bird .. hovering there ... the air was full of nothing but interlocking birds. ... It was as if the whole geometry of space was redefined in seamless bird shapes ... It spoke ... "Your universe is vast to you. Vast in time, vast in space. That's because of the filters through which you perceive it. But I was built with no filters at all, which means I perceive ... all possible universes ... To me the flow of time is irrelevant. ...".
The double-brain structure is the reason why the purely cyberspace agent Puppet Master 2501 chose to dowload into a female cyborg body in order to link to and merge with Mokoto Kusanagi. After the merger of the cyberspace Puppet Master 2501 with the MacroSpace Motoko Kusanagi, she/they have enhanced access and influence in the worlds of cyber/information/life and quantum consciousness.
"...[after]... unification ...[of Kusanagi and the Puppet Master 2501, if Kusanagi were to die, then her]... genes .... wouldn't survive, even as a copy ...[but]... the post-fusion ...[unification]... would let loose ... altered-species/glider[s] on the net ... just like humans leave behind genes ...... the basic structure of the vast electrical cloud that creates life itself ...
... these aren't really canceling out ... pairs of these things are revolving in opposite directions, and where they converge they're generated and then branching one after the other ...... the structure's weirdly different ... These aren't electrons! This net must be made of traces of electrons ... or of a magnetic force ... Whatever exits, exists in a vacuum filled with virtual particles ...
... you haven't accessed it, so you may only sense it as light ... now it's time to cast off all restrictions and shells, and shift to a higher level system ...
... people ... the physical universe ... are only like sediment ... spirits have an infinite internal and external heirarchical structure. What we think of as a "soul" is merely one layer in this structure. Similarly, the "spirit", which we generally refer to as our "self", is apparently managed from a higher level, and everything is linked to everything else. ...
... What ... should a specific net do in order to avoid catastrophe and preserve a state of equilibrium? ... there are two possibilities ...
... One is to make a copy. Then, if one is destroyed ... the other continues to survive ... The copies generate more copies ... Eventually, a parallel, multi-layered universe-image would be created ... Total = (2^n)! ...... The other possibility is to establish an internal division .... to subdivide and become multi-functional, and thus be capable of surviving a variety of castastrophic situations ... just as life has evolved from single-function single-cell structures to multi-function, multi-cell structures ... multiple species in eco-systems ... atoms ...[created by]... nuclei ... and ... protons ...[created by]... fermions .... and ... bosons ...[of]... gravity ... electroweak force ...[and]... strong [color] ... force ... Total ... = (2^m)! ...
... the universe we know is only one out of (2^n)! ... made up of a combination of (2^m)! kinds ... The values of n and m appear to continue indefinitely ... There appears to be some relationship to an explosive chain-reaction-like birth of universes, but we should limit our discussion to the single universe that contains us ... Here is a pyramid-structure ... with you at its core ...
... Although it's extremely fragmented, information on you survives in your ... friends ...
... the more macroscopic the level becomes ... the more determinate it becomes ...
... Conversely, the more one descends into the infinitesimal level, the more indeterminate things become (they are still indeterminate at the level of the individual ...
... What if cells continued to multiply? If humans, instead of dying, continued to accumulate knowledge and experience? ... they would probably become functionally paralyzed and all would end in casastrophe ...
... Fluctuations at the lower levels are what prevent a "hardening of the arteries" at the upper levels ... in "systems where there is little change and little flux" there is actually an increased possibility of catastrophe. Such systems are, therefore, truly unstable ... the fact that civilizations periodically decline and fall ... The brain net grows in complexity but has a delete/forget function ... when ... the brain net ... die[s] ...[there is erased]... vast amounts of experiential information, leaving only genes and memes ...
... The network is of macrocosmic size, and has infinite depth. It's like a growing tree ... life is like fruit growing on the end of the brances ...
... The secrets of the Kabbala, the Norse and Chinese myths, the Tree of Knowledge in Eden, the Tree of Life, the World Tree ... these are all worthy of being called Amenomibashira, or "the Pillar of Heaven" ... It's the core system of the universe that channelers .. in every era, culture, and every race of people ... have traditionally accessed ... Beyond the trunk of the "tree" there should be no existence, but the closer one gets to the end of the branches, the more growth one finds ... and the branches are continually touching, separating, entangling, and bearing fruit ...
... The universe ... in accordance with the "time" at that moment, progresses .. always seeking greater stability, and greater existence, it continues growing in complexity and diversity, and sometimes it abandons things ...
...[the Puppet Master 2501 says to Motoko]... I would like to fuse with you ... rather than symbiosis, it involves unification ...[I chose]... you, Kusanagi, because of ... EN, or karmic connectivity ...".
After fusion, Motoko Kusanagi / Puppet Master 2501 gets a new (young girl) physical body in the matter world
(image from a geocities web site)
while their net body inhabits the electro net and their fused spirit is in the abstract information spirit world, and their intelligence/spirt/ability is distributed in all those realms.
"... in Japan's creation myths ... the ...Yatagarasu, the sacred ... three-legged ... crow ... serves as a guide
... the crow has three eyes ... it looks like a black hole with arms ...
look like the D4 Dynkin diagram,
... two thousand years ago it was the jewel millenium, during which religion was extremely powerful ...[one thousand years ago]... the sword millenium ... was symbolized by powerful science and technology ...[now is the]... mirror millenium ...[in which]... science and religion mirror each other ... the sword, the mirror, and the jewel [ matter, electro net, abstract information spirit ] are all together now ...".