Yes, she’s a fictional character-a cartoon, even - but there is no more frightfully prescient web parable than her story, Serial Experiments Lain, the 13-episode anime series that first aired in Japan in July 1998. “You’re wrong,” she responds.Īt age 14, Lain was extremely online. Lain is young, and doesn’t yet know how to use a computer, but she knows better than to place her faith in the older generation’s rigid distinction between real life and online performance. Do you understand what I’m warning you about?” You mustn’t confuse it with the real world. “When it’s all said and done,” he says, “the Wired is just a medium of communication and the transfer of information. At the onset, Lain Iwakura’s father warns her about the social perils of the internet, alternatively known as “the Wired” in the parlance of Serial Experiments Lain.
