Is the Arab Spring an example of a stand-alone complex, as depicted in Ghost in the Shell? Certainly the conditions were ripe for revolution, given the consistently high food and energy prices. Still, revolutions are typically isolated events that take a long time to build up, but in a single season of 2011, protest spread throughout the Middle East.
Okay, you could say that the triggering event, Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation, was a copy of Thich Quang Duc's actions, though I'm not sure that either expected to overthrow their respective governments entirely. And the other revolutions were copying the successful one in Tunisia.
But revolutions in those countries happened almost overnight. And aspects of the network significantly contributed to those insurrections, such as the availability of the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables. Moreover, the revolutions have been enabled and coordinated by social media, mobile phones, and electronic communication.
None of the protest movements were organized around a charismatic leader; instead each protest movement seems to be motivated by individuals infected with the revolution meme, coordinating through the Internet. So, has the network grown in such a way that we're seeing a bona fide stand-alone complex, as depicted in Ghost in the Shell? Or am I reading too much into the situation?
I'm writing a fanfic that's set in the real world, in the modern day, and Aramaki Daisuke from Ghost in the Shell is one of the characters (at about age 45 or so). While this question is really for the fanfic, I thought that it belongs in this forum due to the subject matter.
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Okay, you could say that the triggering event, Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation, was a copy of Thich Quang Duc's actions, though I'm not sure that either expected to overthrow their respective governments entirely. And the other revolutions were copying the successful one in Tunisia.
But revolutions in those countries happened almost overnight. And aspects of the network significantly contributed to those insurrections, such as the availability of the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables. Moreover, the revolutions have been enabled and coordinated by social media, mobile phones, and electronic communication.
None of the protest movements were organized around a charismatic leader; instead each protest movement seems to be motivated by individuals infected with the revolution meme, coordinating through the Internet. So, has the network grown in such a way that we're seeing a bona fide stand-alone complex, as depicted in Ghost in the Shell? Or am I reading too much into the situation?
I'm writing a fanfic that's set in the real world, in the modern day, and Aramaki Daisuke from Ghost in the Shell is one of the characters (at about age 45 or so). While this question is really for the fanfic, I thought that it belongs in this forum due to the subject matter.
-- ∇×V