Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: LonePaladin on <02-04-11/1249:55>
-
A while back, I was thinking about how things have changed in the Shadowrun setting, accommodating newly-developed technologies as well as taking things we haven't yet worked out. This game has always done this, even when it first started -- it had the idea of the direct neural interface and VR when most people (save a certain author) hadn't even thought about it. I was thinking about one aspect that drastically changed recently: the reintegration of wireless tech.
More specifically, I was thinking about this question: Why would wireless have vanished completely by the 2050s? This might have been answered in a recent book (I don't have Unwired), but here's my theory:
Even factoring in the divergence in the timeline around 1990, technology would still progress at an explosive rate. By the 2020s, we'd have global Internet coverage with few or no dead-spots; cheap high-speed Internet access (with, naturally, insanely fast speeds for those with money to spend); devices easily able to talk with each other via wireless link.
Then comes the Crash of '29, with the nastiest computer virus ever running rampant. All this is familiar to anyone who's on this board, so I don't need to reiterate the effects that have been documented.
But here's one that explains why wires came back.
The Crash Virus required three things to propagate: a storage media, some form of OS to enable it to operate, and a way to reach other systems. Consider how many devices today meet these requirements. Naturally, computers and laptops fit, but so do most cellular phones (especially smart-phones), wireless routers, GPS devices, modern game consoles (and even some hand-held types), some of the fancier remote controls, even little 'toy' gadgets that interact with each other.
Consider this: The Crash Virus gets itself planted in someone's netbook. Rather than just immediately start trashing the place, it sits dormant, monitoring the owner's communication hardware (typically, a wireless receiver). The moment it finds a network that's within its range, it connects, plows through any security measures, and plants itself there too. All it takes is one infected computer approaching a Starbucks, and every laptop and smartphone within range is infected within seconds.
Any location offering "Free Wi-Fi" would become a breeding ground for this virus. And that's just to reach the wireless devices within its range; if this area has an active Internet connection, well, it just went global in that 3.8 seconds.
In the year and a half (or so) that Echo Mirage needed to track down and wipe out the virus, there were other steps taken to limit its mobility -- specifically, tearing down the entire 802.11 protocol. Anything using wireless technology -- Bluetooth, WiFi, whatever -- had to be recalled or had to have "mandatory firmware updates" that disabled wireless communication permanently. Considering that the virus tended to burn out hardware as it finished its job in a particular device, this didn't require a lot of work; by the time this process went full-time, many of the targeted items were already rendered useless.
So, with everything having to go back to a direct wired connection, fiberoptics made a reemergence, and everyone grew accustomed to having to plug in their devices to have them talk to each other. This would become the standard state of affairs until the late '50s and Crash 2.0 gave people an incentive to rebuild (again) the Matrix and how it worked.
What do you think? (If any of this has been backed up and/or shot down in any of the books, please provide a reference if you can.)
-
Actually, I'm more of the belief in the divergent timeline where the cell-phone industry (and thus, the wireless) didn't blow up. They didn't have the "Clinton Tech Bubble" that we did, where .dot coms and other tech companies reaped in millions of dollars. Without the tech explosion of the mid- to late-90s, cell phones and wireless communications weren't pressed into service as much. I'd speculate that by 2012, in the SR universe, many people were still using dial-up communications to get on the 'net.
-
Hm. Sounds possible. Anyone remember if the SR1 or SR2 book had anything wireless or cellular in the catalog? That would answer the question, maybe.
-
Portable Phones: Portable phones range from the common wrist models, with or without flip-up view screen, to "walkie-talkie" handset units, to audio-only earplug models with lightweight boom microphones. Range is limited, but a booster pack may be worn on the belt or placed on any convenient surface or part of the user's clothes. Portable phones without a fiber link-up are subject to electromagnetic distortions and jamming.
From this entry, it sounds like they don't have anywhere near the cell coverage we have. (Or, AT&T became a monopoly again.)
-
IIRC--in one of the matrix books (Matrix 2.0 perhaps) it mentions that the bandwidth for matrix connections was not available in wireless. So yes you could jack into the matrix, but just like going through a satilite uplink at the time it was slow.
-
That doesn't even sound like a cellular phone. In fact, I'd think the use of the "walkie-talkie" term is telling, along with the 'limited range' part. It sounds more like those little two-way radios you can find nowadays, just with a lot more channels. There were cell phones before the timeline divergence, but they were bricks; it wasn't until the early '90s that they started to become portable and (relatively) cheap.
Not the bills, though. I had one of those phones around '92. Got burned when I took it to another state and made some calls. Got roaming charges, plus long-distance charges, going both ways. Nasty medicine, them teaspoons.
Still, the lack of a reference to a dot-com boom and the whole wireless Internet thing lends weight to your view.
-
IIRC--in one of the matrix books (Matrix 2.0 perhaps) it mentions that the bandwidth for matrix connections was not available in wireless. So yes you could jack into the matrix, but just like going through a satilite uplink at the time it was slow.
Ah, yes, Matrix details Wireless Links (p. 33), and tells of how stability was a concern for the links. A Flux rating was in place, and jamming was commonplace, resulting in degradation of wireless signals and making decking difficult. The implications from that seem to back up my theory that there wasn't a cellular network like we have in the Sixth World.
-
All you need is 1 or 2% of cell phone users developping brain tumors...
Besides, the ongoing tech curve may suffer a big slowdown if we don't find a solution to have twenty or thirty wireless communicating devices at home, not scrambling with each others and with the neighbours'.
-
According to some timeline notes I had made, at least one SR source mentioned that pages and cell phones passed into common usage by the late 1990s.
-
According to some timeline notes I had made, at least one SR source mentioned that pages and cell phones passed into common usage by the late 1990s.
Ahh, but which edition was it? In 1st and 2nd, cellphones/pagers were still limited because of the limitations in the real world. By the 3rd edition, they were a lot more frequent and game development brought them in further to the game.
-
Sadly, I didn't source it - I checked the most likely SBs, but came up with nothing. :(
I would almost credit Nigel Findley, though - he was fond of referring to events in the 1990s.
-
Keep in mind the original Crash Virus as well. That didn't just "destroy" the modern day BBS/WWW system, but it actively set back technological advances by destroying all knowledge of things. Yes, it's a bit silly and strange to say "A computer virus made us forget how to make and operate cell phones", but really it's no stranger than pretty much anything involving the NAN. Or saying that magic came back to the world and dragons appeared.
It was a storyline element put into place by the early developers to explain why a lot of tech hadn't really progressed much beyond late 80's and early 90's tech levels, and it worked well. Unfortunately, at some point, people forgot about this and started ramming in new toys as fast as possible to not only match the real world, but to try and get all high tech and stuff.
<shrug> I like the retro-dystopia of Shadowruns original design and implementation. Complaining about it is a lot like complaining about Fallout 3's Retro-50's-future setting and how it doesn't "Make sense" in light of modern technology. But that's the point. It's a divergent reality, diverging in 1950. Shadowrun Diverges in 1990. (Earlier, really, but '90 is a good break point).
Bull
-
My take on it has been as follows:
Shadowrun clearly took fiber optic and ran with it early on. All the technological advances that the RW put into high-speed wireless communications? That energy and capital went into making fiber optic the standard communication medium.
I'm not talking just backbones or FIOS. I'm talking about fiber optic bus-work in your home computer.
Further, processor speed and data storage in SR seem to have shot ahead of ours out of the gate, with development slowing down somewhere in the timeline.
There is only so much money and creative thinking available, if I were making fiber optic cheap and robust enough to use as the standard in home computers and home networks, as well as developing processors / data transfer protocols operating in the googol-flops, as well as the storage capacity to make it worth the speed, I no longer have time or money to waste on commercial wi-fi.
just my 2¥.
-
I like to think it was several of the reasons already mentioned but also one other.
Extraterritoriality gave the large corporations free reign to delve into whatever tech they wanted, no more government restrictions. To me, that explains the huge boom in medical science, neurological science, etc, since they could quickly proceed to human testing. After all, Sim Sense, cyberware, etc, wouldn't have been possible so quickly without that.
They were free to explore areas that they couldn't before. That said, they didn't have an unlimited budget for research, nor limitless personnel, innovators, etc. The big corps would allocate their research in areas they deemed to be profitable. So naturally the direction the tech developed was different as well.
So to me it went something like this:
- timeline diverges
- wireless being explored
- extraterritoriality comes into play
- advances that make simsense and VR possible occur, wireless continues to advance in the form of more capable cell phones that can use the internet (like today)
- the internet is replaced with the matrix, using simsense and VR as types of interface. current cellphones can no longer work with the new standard and data requirements and cannot be used with the matrix
- wireless communications research is placed on the back burner as it doesn't seem profitable research at the time. the research continues but at a much slower pace
- wireless tech advances enough to transmit the amount of data required by the matrix standard
- the size requirements of cyberdecks continues to decrease
- commlinks created in R&D, obvious potential for benefits and profits but cost of updating infrastructure to have wireless transmitters around will make it a hard sell. expected slow integration and eventual replacement
- crash 2.0 occurs, heavy damage to current infrastructure
- a new infrastructure proposed, using wireless as a major component. Spun to work on the fears after Crash 2.0 saying the widespread damage could not be duplicated with this system
That's pretty much how I see it.
-
Tagz that is exactly the way I understood the tech curve for the Matrix. If the tech was developed today to allow for a full immersion VR simsense experience but we had to use wires, the fact is it would overtake wireless devices in no time. Personally if given the choice of the Matrix or a new smartphone app, I'd be jumping in any chance I got.
-
I played a little 1st edition and a LOT of 2nd and I recall there being some background about wireless comminications not being secure due to some technological advancement so everyone used fiberoptics. I can't recall what book it was in. Maybe an adventure. There was something about an even newer tech to allow the breaking of fiberoptic lines as well which was I think one of the plot elements of the adventure. All my old books are in deep storage so I cant go check unfortunately.
Another consideration is all the new political boundaries that would make even creating a widespread cell network difficult. Think of the difficulties in using cell phones in other countries and then multiply that by a dozen.
I imagine a satelite network would eventually be created that would surpass our current cell networks. I have not played 3rd or 4th edition so I dont know what if anything they may have added to the background regarding all this.
-
Breaking fiber optics was a long-running storyline Nigel Findley had created that directly played out in one of his novels and then was repeatedly referenced in his books, most notably being Corporate Shadowfiles.
-
Not that my group ever asked, but my answer for them as to why it took so long to build back up a Wireless Networking system was two-fold.
First: During Crash 1.0, commercial Cell Phone Networks suffered the most, with power surges slamming and destroy expensive equipment, and a lot of the infrastructure for the Cell Phone Network that didn't have redundant systems in place (Like the Police Cell Phone System, which is where the technology originated in... The 1930s, I think?) was totally wrecked. As well, there was massive riots against Communications Corporations, with the Mob blaming them for the Crash, which took out even more equipment and, more importantly, trained personnel needed to run the system.
Second: Fiber Optics, while expensive to lay down, didn't suffer from the "Burn Out" that POTS and Wireless systems did during Crash 1.0, and Governments/Corporations heavily invested in them as they were "Safe" from the points of view of the people in charge (Remember, these people are not completely tech savvy, and it was a very scary time.).
Were I ever to run a game in 2050, cell phones would be just coming back into popularity again as small companies are able to be built networks and finally moving away from the hysteria of Crash 1.0. Say, Early- Mid-2000s in popularity. Payphones are still available (And have video or even holo capability!), but the size of the phones are about the size of a flip phone, or even wrist-mounted models for higher-end models. Pocket Computers are basically Smartphones, but aren't called that due to marketing trying to stay away from the hysteria that might still abound. The Megas will buy them up around the late-'50s, early-'60s, and start the move to the Wireless Matrix Initiative.
But, well, that's me.
-
Keep in mind the original Crash Virus as well. That didn't just "destroy" the modern day BBS/WWW system, but it actively set back technological advances by destroying all knowledge of things. Yes, it's a bit silly and strange to say "A computer virus made us forget how to make and operate cell phones", but really it's no stranger than pretty much anything involving the NAN. Or saying that magic came back to the world and dragons appeared.
It was a storyline element put into place by the early developers to explain why a lot of tech hadn't really progressed much beyond late 80's and early 90's tech levels, and it worked well. Unfortunately, at some point, people forgot about this and started ramming in new toys as fast as possible to not only match the real world, but to try and get all high tech and stuff.
<shrug> I like the retro-dystopia of Shadowruns original design and implementation. Complaining about it is a lot like complaining about Fallout 3's Retro-50's-future setting and how it doesn't "Make sense" in light of modern technology. But that's the point. It's a divergent reality, diverging in 1950. Shadowrun Diverges in 1990. (Earlier, really, but '90 is a good break point).
Bull
Supposedly, Fallout is set to some future with a retro design fetish where they developed cold fusion but not the transistor or microchip.
There was something about Fuchi or Renraku getting big because they sat on a new kind of storage system that was incompatible with existing systems. Worthless until the virus did its thing, and the big corporations wanted to rebuild the net in their own image. So in SR1 to SR3 one have storage chips with actually working DRM, and the matrix for most is a push medium not unlike cable tv (works better on the balance sheet for the corporations i suspect, just watch them try to squeeze payments out of Google and such IRL recently).
The WMI seems to have released a very angry bobcat from its bag tho, with the new crackability of programs and such.
-
Supposedly, Fallout is set to some future with a retro design fetish where they developed cold fusion but not the transistor or microchip.
No supposedly about it. Watch the intro to the original Fallout. The "Water Chip" you're hunting has a vacuum tube or two in it.
Basically, history didn't have the Anti-Nuclear Technology issue that RL had, and research money was dumped into nuclear energy technologies rather than information processing. But I digress...
-
Exactly my point. As has been explained away earlier... What happens if in the 90's, companies and the government funnel money into something other than wireless and cell-phone technology? What if the Crash Virus proves that those systems are especially vulnerable? Whatever. The point is, there's a split... And Shadowrun's developmental tech goes in a different direction. Which is why the "But we have iPhones NOW!" arguments irritate me. We have iPhones. Shadowrun had Pocket Secretaries. Which were loads cooler as a name than "Commlink" (Which is the ultimate in generic sci-fi names... But this is a digression :))
Bull
-
Supposedly, Fallout is set to some future with a retro design fetish where they developed cold fusion but not the transistor or microchip.
No supposedly about it. Watch the intro to the original Fallout. The "Water Chip" you're hunting has a vacuum tube or two in it.
Basically, history didn't have the Anti-Nuclear Technology issue that RL had, and research money was dumped into nuclear energy technologies rather than information processing. But I digress...
Also, this. I love Fallout because it just embraces it's idiosyncrasies. It's a completely absurd premise. It KNOWS it's an absurd premise. Yet, it embraces it, runs with it, and we love it for that.
Shadowrun fans and writers needs to stop being afraid of Shadowrun's absurdities, and needs to embrace them once again.
-
Exactly my point. As has been explained away earlier... What happens if in the 90's, companies and the government funnel money into something other than wireless and cell-phone technology? What if the Crash Virus proves that those systems are especially vulnerable? Whatever. The point is, there's a split... And Shadowrun's developmental tech goes in a different direction. Which is why the "But we have iPhones NOW!" arguments irritate me. We have iPhones. Shadowrun had Pocket Secretaries. Which were loads cooler as a name than "Commlink" (Which is the ultimate in generic sci-fi names... But this is a digression :))
Bull
Never underestimate the nature of human fear. The concept of dealing with nuclear material was based on research funds that never developed due to a mass panic over radiation, partially caused by Government Miscommunication with the general public.
So, "Crash 1.0" happens, cell phone and Wi-Fi is blamed for the massive hacking that hit all computer systems. "It iz da evulz!" go the public. Corporations get away from it due to lack of demand. Fiber Optic lines are run for secure and "Safe" networking. Have a nice future.
Crash 2.0 happens, Wired communication is proven to be just as unreliable as Wireless, people are afraid period now, but more willing to accept Wireless as it's "Just as good as", which isn't much. But it's convenient. Which makes for great marketing, and wireless transactions make for great ways of... Bah, you know all that.
So, yeah. To finish: People are stupid sheep.
This message brought to you by too many years working Tech Support. Hug your Tech Support Veteran today.
-
My hypothesis: In the divergent time-line the fiber optic lobbies had more money than the wireless providers and thus wireless was squelched.
Secondary, crazysauce hypothesis: Edison's ghost manifested thru a mana spike and out of spite twords Tesla hexed the wireless industry causing their failure.
-
Please, Tesla's ghost would have whupped Edison's spectral hoop from here to the Moon.
-
Please, Tesla's ghost would have whupped Edison's spectral hoop from here to the Moon.
Which is what happened, when he was freed by the second crash. See, Edison's lackeys were waiting for the awakening to trap Tesla. I'm betting there was some IE involvement. You know those elves and their meddling.
-
On a side note, I wonder what will happen on Test Drive Day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_IPv6_Day).
-
[chuckle]
It'll be Crash 0.8 beta.
-
Exactly my point. As has been explained away earlier... What happens if in the 90's, companies and the government funnel money into something other than wireless and cell-phone technology? What if the Crash Virus proves that those systems are especially vulnerable? Whatever. The point is, there's a split... And Shadowrun's developmental tech goes in a different direction. Which is why the "But we have iPhones NOW!" arguments irritate me. We have iPhones. Shadowrun had Pocket Secretaries. Which were loads cooler as a name than "Commlink" (Which is the ultimate in generic sci-fi names... But this is a digression :))
Bull
Only that there was nothing "pocket" about those secretaries until a late SR3 printing changed the weight from several kilos to below 500 grams...
-
So, "Crash 1.0" happens, cell phone and Wi-Fi is blamed for the massive hacking that hit all computer systems. "It iz da evulz!" go the public. Corporations get away from it due to lack of demand. Fiber Optic lines are run for secure and "Safe" networking. Have a nice future.
More like the wired, stars of stars layout was supposedly more capable of containing the spread of the virus (one took the connection for the next tier offline and the virus had nowhere to go).
but then more and more the net became not just a nice thing to have, but a requirement to do business at all and we get:
Crash 2.0 happens, Wired communication is proven to be just as unreliable as Wireless, people are afraid period now, but more willing to accept Wireless as it's "Just as good as", which isn't much. But it's convenient. Which makes for great marketing, and wireless transactions make for great ways of... Bah, you know all that.
And 2.0 showed how the original plan was easy to cripple with attacks aimed at key points. Wireless however could be claimed "self healing" (at least at the local level). And it was quickly rolled out in the aftermath of 2.0, so that it found itself with a big install base by the time the powers that be had shrugged off the shell shock.
-
Shadowrun fans and writers needs to stop being afraid of Shadowrun's absurdities, and needs to embrace them once again.
This i can agree with. Like having a kraken snack on commuter cars as a "nuisance" rather then a catastrophe for instance?
-
Yeah, a fleet of re-transmitter semi-trucks with Nexi-Trailers on the top of parkades and you got a limited Wireless Matrix System up and running again at a pretty cheap price and rapid speed. Great selling point for MSPs.
-
Semi-rig trains are the coolest. One of my favorite stories is about a land/t-bird pirate busting his cherry hijacking one.
-
Modern Day Train Robbery. :D
-
Indeed.
Nothing like doing a backflip jump from the rear hatch of a LAV onto the top of a speeding rig going 200kph.
The heist crew of this particular pirate family (literally. His father was the pilot, mother is the navigator, brother now runs his own t-bird) topped themselves by doing a HAHO jump from a helium balloon hovering at over 100,000 feet AGL onto a cross-country zeppelin.
There should be links to both stories in my tumblr. If not, they'll be there by tomorrow.
-
I like to think it was several of the reasons already mentioned but also one other.
Extraterritoriality gave the large corporations free reign to delve into whatever tech they wanted, no more government restrictions. To me, that explains the huge boom in medical science, neurological science, etc, since they could quickly proceed to human testing. After all, Sim Sense, cyberware, etc, wouldn't have been possible so quickly without that.
They were free to explore areas that they couldn't before. That said, they didn't have an unlimited budget for research, nor limitless personnel, innovators, etc. The big corps would allocate their research in areas they deemed to be profitable. So naturally the direction the tech developed was different as well.
So to me it went something like this:
- timeline diverges
- wireless being explored
- extraterritoriality comes into play
- advances that make simsense and VR possible occur, wireless continues to advance in the form of more capable cell phones that can use the internet (like today)
- the internet is replaced with the matrix, using simsense and VR as types of interface. current cellphones can no longer work with the new standard and data requirements and cannot be used with the matrix
- wireless communications research is placed on the back burner as it doesn't seem profitable research at the time. the research continues but at a much slower pace
- wireless tech advances enough to transmit the amount of data required by the matrix standard
- the size requirements of cyberdecks continues to decrease
- commlinks created in R&D, obvious potential for benefits and profits but cost of updating infrastructure to have wireless transmitters around will make it a hard sell. expected slow integration and eventual replacement
- crash 2.0 occurs, heavy damage to current infrastructure
- a new infrastructure proposed, using wireless as a major component. Spun to work on the fears after Crash 2.0 saying the widespread damage could not be duplicated with this system
That's pretty much how I see it.
That is also how I have pretty much imagined it. It all comes down to what was cost effective to develop and use at the time.
That totally makes a lot of sense.
-
From Corporate Shadowfiles, page 102.
>>>>>I Beg to differ, Hangfire. I can think of a fragsing good
reason for unwritten laws. Publicly declaring something illegal also
publicly declares that it's possible. To use a simple example:, no
law exists against breaking the speed of light because no one can
pull It off. Laws of nature see to that.
So think about this reason for unwritten laws. Everybody
knows about the: Crash of '29, right, Well, a lot of data got lost
when the computer systems went down, The viral code had a
weird propensity for encrypted data, which suggests It might well
have been a core-wars weapon gone haywire. Because of the
virus' preferred snacking pattern, the corps lost the data that they
considered the most Important and most sensitive. They lost stuff
on secret corp drawing boards before '29 that never reared it's
head afterward. Ten to one, some of that lost data probably had
enormous potential to destabilize the balance: of corp power, and
l"m sure most of the: megacorps prefer that It rernain lost. Secret
concords could make certain of that. Say the triple-A megacorps
all know that detalls on a particularly destabilizing technology
disappeared in the Crash. The court establishes a concord making
research Into that technology illegal so the major megacorps don 't
pursue It, and an Omega Order wipes out any minor corps that do.
Makes sense, doesn't it<<<<<
-Hersh (23:05:57/ 4- 17-54)
That's the reason I have always used.
The details are not so important, for some reason this stuff was considered highly dangerous after the crash of 29, and the corps stopped any research into wireless technologies. Now, some odd 40 years later, something changed this - Maybe Dunkelzahn's death had something to do with it :P
-
The details are not so important, for some reason this stuff was considered highly dangerous after the crash of 29, and the corps stopped any research into wireless technologies. Now, some odd 40 years later, something changed this - Maybe Dunkelzahn's death had something to do with it :P
Considering some of the secret packages and files that went out to certain people, this is certainly a possibility.
Another one, Captain Chaos is trying to get out, and the Wireless Matrix is his attempt. :P