Reading Johnny Mnemonic, I felt kind of bad for poor Johnny, who has all this information in his head, but isn’t able to access any of it. He stores everyone’s information except his own memories. In away I do sympathize with him.

The story is clearly some futuristic alternate reality in which cybernetic surgery is a thing. Jonny being the data trafficker he is, it is only assuming that most if not all the information he retrieves is very time sensitive and is risky information to posses.

This story told through an alternate reality raised the question of our own reality of invasion of personal lives and information of individuals by the government and corporations through the use of technology. The alternate reality here isn’t too far fetched from the reality we live in today, and along with the fact that this was written over twenty-five years ago, we can see that people then still had a fear of the government knowing to much, which honestly is a scary thought that privacy is becoming harder to find and that soon there won’t be anything that you can keep to yourself, including your own memories.

Ghost in the shell is another reality that again, doesn’t seem to far off from where are future is looking forward to the idea the government or some higher power could just re-wire someone to be basically a robot, and have little to know independent thought. Essentially taking way individualism. Without individualism the world would be pretty bland and I feel like progression would end or become stagnant. Because without creativity and individualism there is no room for multiple perspectives on different ways of solving a problem.