Serial Experiments Lain/Trivia

The creators of Serial Experiments Lain draw on a freaking lot of sources. The series takes on a whole new meaning when you understand all the Shout Outs and allusions. So here's a quick guide to them all.

Serial Experiments Lain

 * Cyberia, a bar/disco frequented in the series is an allusion to the nonfiction novel by the same name by Douglas Rushkoff. The pun on "Siberia" is intentional. See also Gaia, the global brain in the same book.
 * It was also the name of one of the earliest cybercafé franchises - which had a branch in Tokyo.
 * Protocol 7 refers, probably, to the 7th Layer, the neurogenetic circuit, of the Eight Layers of Conciousness as proposed by Timothy Leary.
 * And could also be a successor to the upcoming new internet protocol IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) (the current internet protocol is IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4)).
 * NAVI, the trademark-turned-noun for computer in the series, is contracted from Knowledge Navigator, a term invented by Apple CEO John Sculley in his book Odyssey. It referred to a computer connected to a vast network where everyone was connected.
 * Copland OS was an unreleased operating system by Apple Computers. See also System 7, its predecessor.
 * Devices, in this context, refers to Marshal McLuhan's concept.
 * Gaia, a global brain in Cyberia shares a common thread with the collective shared unconscious in Lain
 * Earth Coincidence Control Office by John C. Lilly, a higher intelligence controlling the "coincidences" on Earth.
 * Knights of the Eastern Calculus: The Knights of the Lambda Calculus are a semi-mythical, semi-serious, real-world group of hackers devoted to the use of the programming language Lisp.
 * Tachibana Labs is a play on words on Apple Macintosh, (a type of Apple) itself being the name of a citrus fruit (the citrus tachibana)
 * Layer ## at the beginning of each episode is said by Apple's Whisper voice in Mac OS text-to-speech software.
 * Nezumi, the Knights-wannabe who carries a computer rig and accesses the Wired while he walks matches the description of a Gargoyle from Snow Crash, as do the MIB agents, who wear the same headgear (complete with laser sight) that Lagos was described as wearing.
 * Close the World, Open the neXt. Compare NeXT and neXt. NeXT was the high-end computer company founded by Steve Jobs after his ouster from Apple. The Internet as we know it (that is, the hypertext-based World Wide Web) was invented by Tim Berners-Lee on a NeXTSTEP computer.
 * to Be continued, where Be uses the same colouring as Be OS used.
 * hello (again), the text from an Apple advertisement, is used in an omake.
 * What is Artificial Life? from ALIFE VI is quoted in text-form at several places.
 * While it's debatable, Lain can be seen as an Expy of Rei Ayanami. This has been denied by writer Chiaki J. Konaka, who hadn't seen Neon Genesis Evangelion until after he'd written the fourth episode. This is not relieving.

Layer 01: WEIRD

 * Think Blue Count One Tow, an allusion to Think Blue, Count Two, a short story set in Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind series.
 * Lain's old computer is reminiscent of a 20th Anniversary Macintosh. It runs a Communication OS, denoted by a large capital C as it's logo - reminiscent of the Commodore logo.
 * The text seen on the blackboard in the classroom is code, written in the C programming language.
 * NeXT (an OS) icons appear on Lain's father's computer desktop.
 * "WEIRD" is an anagram for "WIRED".

Layer 02: GIRLS

 * Urban Diary is used as a background during the Accela TV News report.

Layer 04: RELIGION

 * Lain's computer rig includes HAL Power 5000 systems.

Layer 06: KIDS

 * The floating mouth that chats with Lain on the Wired is a pretty obvious Shout Out to Alice in Wonderland. Lain even refers to him/it as an "annoying Cheshire Cat."
 * Parts of Lain's rig comes from Moebius, a real-world software company that would have been quite new to the market when SE:Lain was released.
 * Actually the URL of the brand in the equipment is Mebious. Which contains a Lain related mumbo-jumbo page.

Layer 07: SOCIETY

 * During class, Lain programs on her HandiNAVI in the multi-paradigm programming language Lisp. This is likely related to the Knights of the Lambda Calculus, because in real life they were a community surrounding the Lisp language.
 * Nezumi's perspective is viewed through Apple's HotSauce interface, which was created to give users a novel Internet experience. The program code shown in one scene seems to be a perl script for generating a web page, also known as CGI Script.

Layer 11: INFORNOGRAPHY

 * Think different was one of Apple's most successful advertisement campaigns.
 * Alice apparently uses an iMac G3.

Layer 13: EGO

 * Lain's father comments that "madelines would be good with tea."

"With thanks to thought experiments Lain"