Stand Alone Complex was based on Yoshiki Sakurai’s 2001 Media Ecology dissertation “The Whereabouts of the Other in the Future of Human-Robot Interaction” (「他我を宿す条件 ～人間・ロボット間コミュニケーションの行方～」). It is about how the phenomenon of THE LAUGHING MAN — unique minds becoming individual components of a complex system acting as one collective consciousness (memes), and the phenomenon of THE TACHIKOMA — perfect machine copies of each other evolving individual differences, are the two inevitable consequences of data synchronization. The interaction between these antithetical phenomena is explored on a literary level in Stand Alone Complex, and political in 2nd GiG. Stand Alone Complex is the most cerebral anything anywhere, and it hasprophesied most contemporary Internet phenomena such as Anonymous and Asange with perfect precision several years ahead.