World of Ghost in the Shell

The manga and anime series Ghost in the Shell takes place in a cyberpunk version of Earth in the near future. The series focuses on Japan, but several other nations figure prominently in some stories. The world of Ghost in the Shell features significant advances in technology, the most significant of which is the cyberbrain, a mechanical casing for the human brain that allows mental interface with the Internet and other networks.

Technology

Cyberbrains

A cyberbrain (電脳, dennō) is a device in the fictional universe of Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow (and also in Shirow's later work Real Drive) that acts as a self-contained module containing, protecting, and interfacing an artificially augmented brain. The "brain" includes the brain stem but excludes the eyes, optic nerves, and most of the spine. By being physically self-contained, the cyberbrain allows the artificially augmented brain inside to function or be physically stored inside a body, to be physically transferred between bodies, or to be temporarily stored or transported outside any body. Cyberbrain implants, in conjunction with micromachines, allow the brain to initiate and maintain a connection to computer networks or other individuals who also possess a cyberbrain. This capability results in a number of unforeseen psychosocial phenomena whose emergence is a major plot element of the various Ghost in the Shell stories.

Think Tank (Blur album)

Think Tank is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Blur, released in May 2003. Jettisoning the Britpop sound of Blur's early career as well as the lo-fi indie rock of Blur (1997), Think Tank continued the jam-based studio constructions of the group's previous album, 13 (1999). The album expanded on the use of sampled rhythm loops and brooding, heavy electronic sounds. There are also heavy influences from dance music, hip hop, dub, jazz, and African music, an indication of lead singer-songwriter, Damon Albarn's expanding musical interests.

Recording sessions started in November 2001, taking place in London, Morocco and Devon, and finished a year later. The album's primary producer was Ben Hillier with additional production by Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim), and William Orbit. At the start of the sessions, guitarist Graham Coxon had been in rehab for alcoholism. After he rejoined, relationships between him and the other members became strained. After initial recording sessions, Coxon left, leaving little of his presence on the finished album. Think Tank is a loose concept album, which Albarn has stated is about "love and politics". Albarn, a pacifist, had spoken out against the invasion of Afghanistan and, after Western nations threatened to invade Iraq, took part in the widespread protests against the war. Anti-war themes are recurrent in the album as well as in associated artwork and promotional videos.

Third Way

In politics, the Third Way is a position akin to centrism that tries to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies. The Third Way was created as a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various centre-left progressive movements in response to international doubt regarding the economic viability of the state; economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism and contrasted with the corresponding rise of popularity for economic liberalism and the New Right. The Third Way is promoted by some social democratic and social liberal movements.

Major Third Way social democratic proponent Tony Blair claimed that the socialism he advocated was different from traditional conceptions of socialism. Blair said "My kind of socialism is a set of values based around notions of social justice ... Socialism as a rigid form of economic determinism has ended, and rightly". Blair referred to it as "social-ism" that involves politics that recognized individuals as socially interdependent, and advocated social justice, social cohesion, equal worth of each citizen, and equal opportunity. Third Way social democratic theorist Anthony Giddens has said that the Third Way rejects the traditional conception of socialism, and instead accepts the conception of socialism as conceived of by Anthony Crosland as an ethical doctrine that views social democratic governments as having achieved a viable ethical socialism by removing the unjust elements of capitalism by providing social welfare and other policies, and that contemporary socialism has outgrown the Marxian claim for the need of the abolition of capitalism. Blair in 2009 publicly declared support for a "new capitalism".