Hey everyone,

Nice to find a forum dedicated to one of my favorite mangaka. Lately I've been pondering the underlying philosophy of Blame!...

By the end of Noise, we learn that human society is administrated through the Netspere, and that the Netsphere's controllers were working on creating silicon life forms for use as weapons. This silicon reconstruction technology was stolen by the Order, who obviously wanted powerful bodies and also seemed to have a religious basis for their actions. In Noise, Order members state that they are invoking the "Netchaos" when they create their proto-exterminators. I take this to mean that there was a degree of chaos in the Netspere during the Noise era, and that the Order was able to exploit this condition in order to download exterminator data.

The Safeguards and Netspere administration seem to be dedicated to creating an orderly society within the Net (ironic, considering that the "Order" are their enemies). They only grant access to humans with implanted hardware, then they try to exterminate humans without implants. But if you think about it, their actions only cause more and more chaos as a result.

I think that the Netchaos originated because the Netspere had become so large and complex, and the Order exploited that condition in their search for power. At some point in history, the Net authorities abandoned network implants and genetically engineered humans with the NTG in order to keep SCs out of the Netsphere (Clawsa's postmortem presence in the Net indicates that the original Silicon Creatures could easily access it). But after the NTG came into existence, the humans with net genes abandoned their bodies and spent all their time in the Netspere, and eventually the Netchaos increased to the point where a disaster occurred and the entire Netspere began malfunctioning, as stated by the being in the "Retreived Consciousness" chapter. The SGs began killing humans indiscriminately, the SCs eliminated anyone with net genes and the rest is history.

I think the message of Blame! is that the more humans attempt to impose order on the world, the more chaos will seep through the cracks and make things worse than they were in the first place. Cities, computer networks and technology in general all represent human-imposed order, but in Blame! the City and the Netsphere are totally chaotic. I don't think that the Order/SCs are really at fault for creating the state of chaos--they're just symptoms of the chaos. The SCs represent a nihilistic way of thinking that embraces chaos, while the GA is desperately trying to retain order. Will anyone realize the need for balance? Maybe that question will be answered in NSE...

That's pretty good, when I thought Safeguards, I had thought of 2 reasons why they kill like crazy:

They are malfunctioning

or

They were created to kill.

Your reasoning sounds a hellalot better.

Nice interpretation. I'm developing one too, related to the human mind structure, not so social or political or even the human power over the world; that sounds old sci-fi to me.
Anyway, I'm also waiting for NSE...