The Wired

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The Wired is a fictional computer network featured in the anime series Serial Experiments Lain which is similar to the internet. It also closely resembles the Matrix from William Gibson's Neuromancer.

[edit] Nature of The Wired

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Wired is a complex and enormous computer network that dwarfs the modern day internet in size, dimension, and complexity. It is said that with the very first telegraph transmission a whole new layer of reality, an informational layer so to speak, was created and with its growth it has come to be known as the Wired. A special chip was released for NAVIs called the Psyche that would allow one to use his own mind as a co-processor, thus boosting the speed of the processor and the Navi itself. The Wired has advanced so much by this time that the speed of access as well as the amount of data able to be accessed in the Wired is actually limited only by the speed and ability of the NAVI being used to connect.

Before the series begins Eiri Masami, a chief researcher at Tachibana Lab, developed the Wired Protocol Version 7, it was only with the implementation of this protocol that people would be able to access information and interact within the Wired without limitations. The Wired protocol (which is presumably similar to an advanced form of present day internet protocol) provides for transfer of information on a massive scale and at high (practically instantaneous) speeds. Eiri's goal with the Wired Protocol v7 was to link the electronic layer of reality that is the Wired with the physical reality of the real world, to break down the barrier between the strata of realities, and to network all human minds together forming a massive neural network that would essentially be a collective consciousness, a brain of all humanity with each individual brain being the equivalent of a neuron (albeit a very advanced multifaceted neuron).

To do this Eiri added a function to use the Schumann resonance, (a broadband of low electromagnetic frequencies particular to a certain layer of the atmosphere of the earth) in the 7th protocol code by his own design, without Tachibana Labs permission. He advocated that every human's unconscious should be connected to a wireless network without devices by Schumann effect. When Tachibana found out about this, they dismissed him. It is possible that Eiri also used technology developed in the K.I.D.S. experiments.

Eiri implanted his actual consciousness within Protocol v7, and when it was implemented he essentially became a self made "god" of the Wired. His body was found one week later as he felt he no longer had any use for it. He was capable of manifesting a full range of godly powers within the Wired and had a heavily divine influence in the real world as well, including the manipulation of all electronic information including human memories as well as some power of material genesis because of the crumbling barrier between realities. Lain Iwakura eventually overpowered and defeated Eiri in the Wired and Tachibana Labs began to develop and implement Protocol v8 that would be clear of all of Eiri's schemes and his self proclaimed godhooded consciousness. Lain's truly divine powers of the Wired had come to fruition by now though, and she held a permanent spot in the collective unconscious.