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<\/a>Recently I finally got around to watching the movie Appleseed<\/a> and its sequel Appleseed: Ex Machina. You can watch the trailer for Appleseed here<\/a> and the trailer for Ex Machina here<\/a>. Like many works of Japanese anime<\/a>, these movies explore the integration of human and machine, as well as other technologies such as cloning.<\/p>\nOne message of the movies is that humanity has a penchant for pushing itself to the brink of self-annihilation, but it also has a penchant for finding at the brink a way to avoid cataclysm. Ex Machina suggests at one point that all \u201cEdens\u201d are susceptible to serpents, but also that, having lost Eden, that doesn\u2019t mean humanity should give up on survival<\/em>. <\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/medias.lemonde.fr\/mmpub\/edt\/ill\/2005\/08\/30\/h_9_ill_683940_05083126_appleseed+x1p1_ori.jpg\")
<\/a>Some of the more interesting questions the movies explore relate to the consequences of integrating machine and human. In the movies, as one expects will also be the case in real life at some point in the future, machine supplements and replacement parts are used on people who are injured. We thus see a number of cybernetically-enhanced individuals on the police force, but not everyone has such enhancements, and so clearly they such technology is being used to save the lives and functionality of the injured, and not for the sake of enhancement alone. Being part machine has its drawbacks and not only advantages. One of the key moral questions often discussed in our time is the appropriateness of genetic and technological enhancement to improve humanity, rather than merely correct natural errors. And Appleseed explores notions of humanity living in harmony with and cooperating with computers and clones in ways that other films that I\u2019ve watched do not.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2091\/2314952641_9566173095.jpg?v=0\")
<\/a>We also get to explore a question that the Star Wars movies raise. If Anakin had ended up a cyborg but had never turned to the dark side, or had turned back and been reconciled to Padme, could she have loved him in this \u201ctaller, darker and arguably less handsome\u201d form? We find Deunan Knute and Briareos Hecatonchires<\/a> exploring their relationship through just such a situation (and, by the way, the name of the latter suggests that the filmmakers knew Classics<\/em> even if they were sketchy on religion an philosophy).<\/p>\n
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