Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => The Secret History => Topic started by: StarManta on <06-30-11/1225:03>
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I've been working on a theory, and am integrating it into an adventure I'm creating. In essence, it makes no sense for Technomancers to have recently evolved - technology moves too quickly for evolution to keep up (in just two generations of humans the Matrix has been reinvented - twice!). So the only sensible thing is that technology is moving the other way.
In other words, the otaku and the technomancers haven't Emerged to deal with the Matrix, the Matrix has been changing and (possibly intentionally, possibly as a side effect) is becoming easier for humans to access. The otaku started appearing sometime after the first Crash (and rebuild of the Matrix), and when they rebuilt the Matrix again, what do you know? Technomancers.
My hypothesis (and the heart of my adventure) is this: That technomancers have existed all along, and that some entities, likely NeoNET's precursors, have been experimenting on them since long before we knew they existed. The research led them to discover a new way to build Wifi devices, but there wasn't much of a market for an already Matrix-saturated world. What's a megacorp to do?
Via Shadowrunners, engineer the Crash 2.0, that's what. I'm not saying that Deus and all of them weren't involved, but they were pawns of Transys and/or Erika. So the new wifi technology, developed from the minds of technomancers-to-be, spread like wildfire as the megacorp rebuilt the Matrix. And so now technomancers, who had previously had little to no powers, were suddenly able to access all of this technology. The Crash didn't change them, the Crash changed the Matrix, and now they could see it.
Well, the Crash DID change some of them, of course. AIPS was a real thing. But I don't think it gave them the Resonance; it just made them more susceptible to it or more likely to notice it.
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So, the reason I'm posting this on the forums is this: is there hard evidence in any of the sourcebooks to counter this theory? I've read the core book, Unwired (specifically its section on technomancers), and most of the Emergence adventure, and it all seems consistent with this theory to me so far. And what a story uncovering this conspiracy could turn out to be!
(Edit: oops, put the wrong company for the pre-NeoNET conspiring)
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I can agree as far as technomancers could always have ben around but with no wireless marix everywhere o work with but NeoNET/Novatech orchestrating the crash to out Technomancers and TMs then getting loads of hate at them, with no help or public campaign or anything to help them feels un-megacorp like. Epecially as if TMs had ben there biggest source of the new tech it woul make the other megas aware of TMs.
But I don't have emergence, I havn't read much official stuff from before Tempo (besides core/source books).
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A) This is a fictional game world, so bringing evolutionary theory into the argument is valid to a certain point
B) Technomancy may not just be due to the crash/matrix. Wireless signals are (disputedly) affecting Human physiology right now (and possibly have been for decades), so Otaku/Technomancers could have been in development (from a Shadowrun point of view) for 4-5 human generations by 2070
C) There's another catalyst here, the Awakening of Magic. It's entirely possible that the Awakening/Halley's Comet (which spawned an abundance of metagenic freakery) also assisted to kickstart the inexplicable Resonance attribute into sapient physiology.
D) In short, the evolutionary history of TM's is up to you. If you want them to have rationally and explicitly emerged due to certain circumstances, then make it so. There are an abundance of theories abounding, but even Magic (which has been in SR canon long before TM's) has deliberately left some historical and evolutionary aspects unexplained.
Heck, maybe there were Technomancer 'Spike Babies' as well? :) The SR4 world's your oyster, chummer :)
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I seem to remember reading in Emergence (I think) where one Jackpointer was hypothesizing that TMs were the first "mind readers" since they don't even need the Matrix to speak with each other.
There's also that theory that the Resonance is conscious somehow, and that it's been forcing these upgrades to the Matrix to bring it more in line of what this consciousness wants.
My feeling of that was some sort of Cthulhu-esque entity that lives in the EM band.
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My feeling of that was some sort of Cthulhu-esque entity that lives in the EM band.
I personally love this option. +1 to you :)
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I've been working with the idea of pre-crash 2.0 technomancers for a while, with the idea that under the right conditions an otaku could push to the next level. Main use in our campaign has been folks that were inside Deus' arcology, which had a wi-fi rich environment (it's how Deus controlled the drones, security systems, and some of the Banded).
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I read Arcology: Shutdown, but I can't remember what sort of experiments Deus was doing on Otakus.
Is it possible he was trying to force-upgrade them to Technomancers?
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If he wasn't, Pax was.
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Deus was able to force latent otaku into active status and instill otaku-like abilities on others, but they only when they were within the confines of the arcology. And yes, Pax was VERY interested in all of this because when the whole shutdown started she was already 21-22 and well down the road to fading. If I were to guess, I would think that she DID bootstrap to a technomancer during the shutdown, because she was able to break away from Deus and leave the arcology before the army came crashing in and she seemed to become more powerful between then and when she hooked up with Winternight. The creation of the Jormangund dissonant worm was NOT the product of a near-faded otaku, even one who'd gone down the twisted path.
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Not a bad theory. Its helped by Transys, Erika and NeoNET being so far along on the WMI when the Crash 2.0 hit. They were perfectly in place to rebuild the Matrix according to their own desires and to their immense profit. Personally, its always smacked of unbelievability that Novatech's IPO being the scene of Deus' resurrection, the Crash 2.0, and Winternight's attacks, and Novatech STILL survived that debacle, and actually grew after absorbing Erika and Transys, and became NeoNET. Something had to have been up.
Also, considering its Villiers and his company, and his connection with Echo Mirage and the first Crash...Villiers knew something.
As for the nature of technomancers and the Resonance...I dunno. No explanation I've heard has ever satisfied me. My own pet theory is that they, and the otaku, are a new kind of Awakening. Metahumanity's knowledge and consciousness have reached out and formed the Matrix, an information system that connects most people on the planet and is the primary means of communication in the world. It has an unbelievable amount of information, more information than humans have ever produced in the history, running through it all the time. I think this focus of knowledge and belief has created a link into astral, and formed a new hybrid realm, of pure data and magic. The Resonance Realms are metaplanes you must reach through the Matrix, and the Resonance is the great spirit of mankind's knowledge, bodied in the Matrix.
That's my two cents. We'll probably never get a real answer.
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Deus was able to force latent otaku into active status and instill otaku-like abilities on others, but they only when they were within the confines of the arcology.
The Arcology was a Wi-Fi rich environment, correct? So it would make sense that if he was giving them Otaku-like powers, they could only use them in the Arcology, if he was making them Technomancers.
That, or Deus is just that powerful.
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No. SCIRE was very much a hardwired building.
Wi-Fi Matrix wasn't introduced as an idea until 2063 in-game. Deus was out of the SCIRE Matrix for two years by then.
I don't want to dump on your idea too much because it's fun and whatever floats your boat is all good as far as I'm concerned. I have no intention of trying to explain TMs because it makes my head hurt. I just want to say that it is a workable idea so long as you ignore all of the metagaming reasons for why TMs, WiFi, etc. were added to the game. So, yeah. Rock on.
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Deus was hardwired into the SCIRE systems. The SCIRE itself was NOT a fully wired system. Deus used early wi-fi connections (called Snake Eyes links in the rules of the time) to maintain overwatch and control over the Banded (particularly the Blues, Greens, and the Whites that were arcology-'born') as well as the large drones (most notably the mantas, dervishes, and medusae). The SCIRE itself was also heavily shielded to keep such early wireless links from either entering (from the military outside) or leaving (to give outside folks a way to listen in).
Also, it's been established that two of the three primary 'master' AIs (Mirage & Deus) were capable of manipulating the matrix, and possibly the resonance itself, in order to create otaku. Mirage created and guided several of the early generation of otaku, a notable one being Hitomi Shiawase (current Empress of Japan). Deus' skills weren't nearly as good as Mirage's, as the otaku he created/empowered could only operate within the area where Deus had direct influence. It's possible that Morgan might have had the ability, but it was never indicated that she had the inclination or desire to do so, and once she got brain scrambled and became Megaera it's doubtful she could've mustered the focus needed.
So while the phenomena of otaku/technomancers weren't created by AIs, there is some meat to folks seeing a connection between them.
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*Cough*Clockwork*Cough*
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Deus was hardwired into the SCIRE systems. The SCIRE itself was NOT a fully wired system.
You're wrong.
If Dave wanted there to be wireless Matrix there would have been. There is not. The SCIRE PLTG was a completely hardwired system. What you are doing is confusing the SCIRE Matrix with the Deus' remote rigging networks (including Snake-Eyes). Remember, this was SR3—when rigging and decking did not overlap at all unless a decker installed a rigger emulation module into his cyberdeck so that he could hack into CCSS (a rigger network).
Deus automatically detects any decker who uses an existing jackpoint (tridphone, workstation, console) to enter Renraku’s Black Tower. How Deus responds is entirely up to the gamemaster. In some cases, Deus might allow the decker to explore the system before sending otaku to dump the intruder, or he might attack the decker immediately.
In order to avoid detection, the decker must tap into a Matrix feed—either a fiber-optic trunk or a remote slave device (see Jackpoints, p. 200, SR3).
The only thing Snake-Eyes is useful for in that case is to feed new BTL simsense to the Banded.
Deus uses four pieces of cyberware specifically to keep the Banded under his iron control: ASIST converters, carcerand release receivers, invoked memory stimulators and BTL stimulators.
The kicker, however, is the BTL stimulator. As the name implies, this implant is a personalized BTL sim that can be remotely activated through a commlink and experienced via a Snake-Eyes link (the BTL stimulator effectively overrides the Snake-Eyes’ peak controls).
The SCIRE itself was also heavily shielded to keep such early wireless links from either entering (from the military outside) or leaving (to give outside folks a way to listen in).
Not exactly. It's too long to quote, but I'll just direct your attention to pp.56-7 under the heading Communications. It's not shielded, per se. It's simply heavily encrypted beyond the Army's capabilities. Meanwhile they sit and stare at each other because both sides can blind each other at a moment's notice.
I find it interesting that Pyschotrope/Mirage was able in one night (well, with five people. I forget how many it killed) create adult otaku, but Deus couldn't in 18+ months. However, the one thing that Mirage had that Deus didn't was free access to the entire Matrix. Deus could study the effects on Free Whites and Renraku's own studies, and then replicate the effects within its dominion. It's been so long I cannot recall if it was simply a matter of Created Whites being able to access and control the SCIRE systems themselves as if they had been given a measure of Superuser control and access to "complex forms" and "streams" that were simply operations and programs Deus had created to make them capable of operating as otaku. I recall that being a hypothesis at the time that they were running virtual machines in their heads.
I never thought about it too hard, especially since Dave and Jay and other people who did discuss it know WAY more about science and computers than I do.
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My feeling of that was some sort of Cthulhu-esque entity that lives in the EM band.
Sounds like a good description of the dissonance side of things to me.
The way i see it, they are a continuation of Otaku. Basically, as ASIST got more and more realistic their minds where able to recognize the signal as neural without translation (tho the flipflop between SR2 otaku just needing a jack, and SR3 requiring a small ASIST translator is not exactly helping). Then as the wireless matrix kicked into gear, some of the more sensitive people started picking up the radiated energy on a subconscious level. This then resulted in some learning to read the signal, and over time even respond to it (the most basic RFIDs basically feed on the radiated energy to compute a response).
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Ok, I follow you on the wired/wireless distinction inside the SCIRE, Crimson.
Regarding Mirage, one thing else that could've given it an advantage in creating its otaku would be its experiences with the Echo Mirage team. Its core program was beneficial psychological and physiological feedback to support the team and it would've had its own extensive log files of the the time the team was active, which was a long time. Its core program, more or less benevolent nature, and of course access to the full resources of the matrix... together I think the reasoning's as good as any for its success *shrug*.
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Just a tidbit on the Deus connection, System Failure p.16:
On a different track, Transys-Neuronet has successfully captured at least one Node (of the Network) and, though they have not been able to get much of value from the Node’s code fragment, they have shown strong interest in the technology implanted in the Nodes.
And later on TN became part of NeoNET, who were instrumental in creating the new matrix [X-Files theme here]
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My feeling of that was some sort of Cthulhu-esque entity that lives in the EM band.
Sounds like a good description of the dissonance side of things to me.
Actually, I was picturing something a bit more alien. Aware of metahuman life of course, and the greater world, but fully of its own. A great, deep, being formed by the Earth's magnetosphere perhaps and the gestalt electrical sparks of living brains.
If I were to name it, I'd call it "The Sonant". Resonance and Dissonance are just the ebb and flow of its electro-magnetic tides. The yin and yang. It cares not. But it yearns.
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My feeling of that was some sort of Cthulhu-esque entity that lives in the EM band.
Sounds like a good description of the dissonance side of things to me.
Actually, I was picturing something a bit more alien. Aware of metahuman life of course, and the greater world, but fully of its own. A great, deep, being formed by the Earth's magnetosphere perhaps and the gestalt electrical sparks of living brains.
If I were to name it, I'd call it "The Sonant". Resonance and Dissonance are just the ebb and flow of its electro-magnetic tides. The yin and yang. It cares not. But it yearns.
Sounds like the Science victory of Alpha Centauri (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri).
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Just a tidbit on the Deus connection, System Failure p.16:
On a different track, Transys-Neuronet has successfully captured at least one Node (of the Network) and, though they have not been able to get much of value from the Node’s code fragment, they have shown strong interest in the technology implanted in the Nodes.
And later on TN became part of NeoNET, who were instrumental in creating the new matrix [X-Files theme here]
Well, just how did you think control rig implants have become so much less intrusive? A good one used to be 2-3 essence IIRC and now it's fractional. Could've had a lot to do with various R&D folks reverse engineering arcology implants.
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Well, just how did you think control rig implants have become so much less intrusive? A good one used to be 2-3 essence IIRC and now it's fractional.
It also does a lot less than before ;)
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I've been working on a theory, and am integrating it into an adventure I'm creating. In essence, it makes no sense for Technomancers to have recently evolved - technology moves too quickly for evolution to keep up (in just two generations of humans the Matrix has been reinvented - twice!). So the only sensible thing is that technology is moving the other way.
In other words, the otaku and the technomancers haven't Emerged to deal with the Matrix, the Matrix has been changing and (possibly intentionally, possibly as a side effect) is becoming easier for humans to access. The otaku started appearing sometime after the first Crash (and rebuild of the Matrix), and when they rebuilt the Matrix again, what do you know? Technomancers.
My hypothesis (and the heart of my adventure) is this: That technomancers have existed all along, and that some entities, likely NeoNET's precursors, have been experimenting on them since long before we knew they existed. The research led them to discover a new way to build Wifi devices, but there wasn't much of a market for an already Matrix-saturated world. What's a megacorp to do?
Via Shadowrunners, engineer the Crash 2.0, that's what. I'm not saying that Deus and all of them weren't involved, but they were pawns of Transys and/or Erika. So the new wifi technology, developed from the minds of technomancers-to-be, spread like wildfire as the megacorp rebuilt the Matrix. And so now technomancers, who had previously had little to no powers, were suddenly able to access all of this technology. The Crash didn't change them, the Crash changed the Matrix, and now they could see it.
Well, the Crash DID change some of them, of course. AIPS was a real thing. But I don't think it gave them the Resonance; it just made them more susceptible to it or more likely to notice it.
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So, the reason I'm posting this on the forums is this: is there hard evidence in any of the sourcebooks to counter this theory? I've read the core book, Unwired (specifically its section on technomancers), and most of the Emergence adventure, and it all seems consistent with this theory to me so far. And what a story uncovering this conspiracy could turn out to be!
(Edit: oops, put the wrong company for the pre-NeoNET conspiring)
I'm not gunna lie this gave me chills. I think that is exactly how it happened. Plus one to you.
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I seem to remember reading in Emergence (I think) where one Jackpointer was hypothesizing that TMs were the first "mind readers" since they don't even need the Matrix to speak with each other.
I was reading further into Emergence today and stumbled across this
And still no word on where technomancers come from. What could have inflicted these changes on people?
-Glasswalker
I don’t know if it’s a matter of being “changed.” Sure, a lot of ’mancers link their abilities back to the Crash, but there are oth- ers who weren’t caught online during the Crash at all—they sim- ply woke up one day and discovered they were technomancers. In some cases, it seems like they were always technomancers, they were just waiting for technology to catch up to the point where they could use those abilities.
-Netcat
I don’t buy that. It’s not like we could have just missed techno- mancers being around all this time.
-Glasswalker
Who says we did? There are technomancers who can duplicate the feats of pre-Awakening psychics and savants. If you get two technomancers within range of each other, they can talk to each other with their minds. It’s like telepathy. Maybe we just didn’t know how to explain it before.
-Ethernaut
(Dunno if it's kosher to post quotes from the sourcebooks on the forums, or if so, how much is ok. Will not be offended or annoyed in the least if a mod wants to remove the above. Either way, it's on the left side of p.113 of Emergence if anyone would like to look it up.)
So it appears that Netcat had the same idea. Sans the Crash-2.0-conspiracy-theory, at least.
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It gets even crazier in Augmentation of all books. (Well, no. Arsenal would be the most awkward.)
And the quote's fine. I figure common sense would dictate when a quote seems excessive.
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I blame the bugs.
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I blame the bugs.
The Insect Spirits or the faults in AI Code?
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Wait, don't you know they are one and the same?
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Faults in AI... What are you talking about? Those aren't bugs... Those are features.
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Wait wait wait...
MICRODECK built AIs?
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Wait wait wait...
MICRODECK built AIs?
*Points at Protosapient AI's* 'Nuff said.
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Great. Not only do we have to deal with AIs, we have to deal with AIs that suffer from the BSoD.
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Heh. Remember, the D in BSoD stands for Death.... Even Protosapient can melt hacker brains...
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One other little tidbit I just noticed: When converting a character from SR3 to SR4, otaku become technomancers, no questions asked. So it's not that they are merely a similar phenomenon - they are the same. Technomancers existed before the Crash - not just by implication, but written into the rules.
(Source: Contacts & Adventures p.29)
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MICRODECK built AIs?
Picture... A thirty feet tall paper clip standing in the middle of a node, his wide eyes looking down at you. And then a deep voice resonates through your ASIST interface. "It looks like you're searching for the Resonance."
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MICRODECK built AIs?
Picture... A thirty feet tall paper clip standing in the middle of a node, his wide eyes looking down at you. And then a deep voice resonates through your ASIST interface. "It looks like you're searching for the Resonance."
KILL IT WITH VIRTUAL FIRE AND A DATA STORM!!!
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Have we 2071 still?
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2073, working on 2074, methinks. Ah, here we are: Street Legends, August 14th, 2073.
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I was aware of the current date. Horizon has Sarcasm detectors as well.
Besides, "Killing it with fire and data storm" could be rated as a major crime if you target a corporate's citizen. Just mentioning.
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I was aware of the current date. Horizon has Sarcasm detectors as well.
Besides, "Killing it with fire and data storm" could be rated as a major crime if you target a corporate's citizen. Just mentioning.
Assault and Battery, possibly attempted murder, all the way to manslaughter and possibly murder, depending on the circumstances and plea bargaining.
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Clippy ALWAYS deserves to die in a fire...
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I don't know, he looks pretty tough. Maybe you shouldn't risk getting him all bent out of shape.
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Electronic fire and scorch the electronics he had been in with a HERF Gun and Napalm, just to be sure!
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Just hit it with a tac-nuke, to be sure.... The EMP SHOULD crisp all of the non-optical electronics he's on...
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Not as satisfying.
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In the original version of the joke, Clippy was fighting another IA, with a penguin icon just as tall. Dunno how the fight would end though.
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I just happen to be prepping Imago for my group to run. Not really technomancer related I think back in the SR2 days but just to add fuel to your fire, Starmantle:
- At the heart of the adventure is a beyond-cutting-edge cyberdeck which could, with right beyond-cutting-edge programs, allow the beyond cutting-edge decker who built it (Quicksilver/Erewan, another IE - why do they have to be IE?) to... download? ...recreate? oneself into an imago, a free-form roaming the matrix without impacting the load limits of the node it was in. The imago was not just your icon in the matrix; it was you, with all your memories etc. An autonomous sprite or agent of pure you. It gets a little fuzzy, sure.
- Quicksilver worked for Transys Neuronet.
- If the run ended a certain way, Transys Neuronet ended up with the cyberdeck.
- This was well before Crash 2.0, in SR2 days, so back in the time when existing otaku required datajacks.(The adventure does not suggest Quicksilver is an otaku but to support your theory, he definitely was building technology to better represent himself (forever - he was obsessed with life after death) on the Matrix.
- Decades later, Transys/Erika comes out of Crash 2.0 swinging with the wireless stuff.
Coincidence? Well, probably. But there's another nugget anyway. :)
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You know, I was thinking about the Akashic Records (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashic_records) as a concept, and the idea of memetic lifeforms that exist in the em bands is a really cool one. The matrix could be laying over the top of some kind of noosphere that's remained undetected as a mana realm because its particular shapes are too universal for traditions to notice. Technomancers might well be mages with a memetic tradition.
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If they were mages, they'd show up as something other than mundanes on the astral. But in Augmentation, I believe, they were discussing the possibility that magic and resonance were flip-sides of the same genetic trigger. Which is why you can't be emerged and awakened.
What this could mean is that it was the interaction of both the increasing mana and the saturation of the matrix that allowed otaku and technomancers to develop.
Of course, as one shadowtalker said, if the otaku were the equivalent of UGE and technomancers were like Goblinization, what would the matrix equivalent of SURGE bring?
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If they were mages, they'd show up as something other than mundanes on the astral.
Right. Thus the comment about a "noosphere that's remained undetected as a mana realm because its particular shapes are too universal for traditions to notice." Magic as Shadowrun puts it is very perception-based and very tradition specific; someone who summons Earth Elemental slaves will argue to the death that it's completely different from a shaman's mountain spirit pal. It's possible that something might show up as mundane either because the mage expects it to or because the tradition doesn't allow for it to happen. Because of the way enchanting works, there should be literally no reason that you can't make an implanted blade into a weapon focus, but you can't. There should be no reason Technomancers show up as mundane, either, but they do. Besides, it's only another possibility on the pile.
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while i was thinking that resonance is the opposite side of the mana coin, i've come to think that it's more along the lines of those that have become otaku/TM are people that might have become magic users in another time, but technology has provided a second avenue for their possible connection to be made to a larger force.
if they actually had stats for it, (and someone might make them up just for grits and shiggles) those stats probably would show that compared to ED and prior ages, the % of magic users in SR is lower, though SR has things undreamt of in those ages.
and i bet that in the next iteration of SR, they'll make implantable weapon foci a meta-magic/delta-cyber street rumor/possibility.
and the iteration after that will reverse the prohibition on no magic and resonance in the same body. that black IC/Horror will be a bitch to fight. can't wait.
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just think of how mad you can make a Horror when you infect his mana base with BSoD???
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just think of how mad you can make a Horror when you infect his mana base with BSoD???
>> Access: Corrupt Karma -> PC
>> ACCESS FAILURE
>> ACCESS FAILURE
>> ACCESS FAILURE
>> KARMA DUMP INITIATED
>> ALL KARMA TO BE GIVEN TO TARGET "PC"
>> KARMA DUMP COMPLETE
>> LOGGING OFF
>> Thank you for returning to the Void. Have a Nice Day.
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Actually one can tell a mundane from a TM if one score high enough hits on the asensing. So there is a slight, but noticeable difference in their aura.
Also; while some traditionalists will argue that their spirits are different, the fluff backs the unified magic rules by way of a magic conference where proof was presented that it was all in the mind of the summoner.
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Also; while some traditionalists will argue that their spirits are different, the fluff backs the unified magic rules by way of a magic conference where proof was presented that it was all in the mind of the summoner.
I would suggest that the fluff was written in order to support the rules, not the other way around.
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likely a combination, as both the WMI and the magic conference was mentioned in SR3 books long before crash 2.0 and SR4 came about. Still, i was trying to point out that there is a in-setting consensus that all spirits are the same after said conference was done.
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There's also no reason that with spirits that have the ability to see and direct electricity and spells that do it, that spirits shouldn't be able to see information on electronic screens. There's no reason that something that already interacts with EM bands on a regular just can't, for some reason, interact with EM bands.
Unless someone did it on purpose.
Warning, epileptic tree alert part 1: What if the matrix is some anti-magical xanatos gambit started in Atlantis and only just now coming to fruition?
Warning, epileptic tree alert part 2: the entire human endeavor of electronic engineering is an elaborate, universal counterspelling ritual.
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is that like the M25 London orbital motorway in Good Omens?
"In fact, very few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape
of the M25 forms the sigil *odegra* in the language of the Black Priesthood
of Ancient Mu, and means 'Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds'."
-- Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
(constantly generating a fog of low grade evil for scores of miles around.)
does that make a demon the first shadowrunner?
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Oh, they've been doing Shadowruns for a long, long time. The thing is, so have Angels.
I guess the "First Shadowrun" in human memory was done by a snake. It was a con job involving a tree and a woman. ;D
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Oh, they've been doing Shadowruns for a long, long time. The thing is, so have Angels.
I guess the "First Shadowrun" in human memory was done by a snake. It was a con job involving a tree and a woman. ;D
And perhaps a little distraction for the man... :P
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I think technomancers were the result of drinking Tang wrongly.
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Our knowledge once sprang from one source. We must return there again.
(http://i675.photobucket.com/albums/vv115/gaias_hiccup/tang2.jpg)
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Regarding the Origin of the Otaku, well, remember that a) the person who showed the kiddies the way to their abilities was 'among them now', during the chat session in the Denver set in '55, and b) that though Deus created his own otaku, their abilities (or enhanced abilities) only worked while he was present in the SCIRE Matrix, and while they were connected to the Matrix through the SCIRE system. Once he took a powder, their abilities vanished if they weren't previously otaku; I wouldn't even guarantee that any otaku who had their abilities enhanced didn't lose those enhancements as well. (Not saying they couldn't've undergone Submersion to improve, just that any karma-reduced or -free 'false Submersion' was essentially fake, and good only for that limited time. Which would've been why they really did kick ass while Deus had their back.
Morgan/Megaera never made any otaku; Mirage/Psychotrope definitely made 5, none of whom Faded. (Note that Hitomi Shiawase had, at the time, still been young enough to have not undergone any Fading if she had been otaku already.) Since Mirage had remained connected to the Matrix and quasi-dormant (or at least not running around), my money is on 'her' being the source of the Deep Resonance up to the Singularity. An AI whose main concern is psychological stability and an increased capacity for network interaction would be the perfect source for a low-level 'subconscious' connection between itself and street kids who have undergone massive psychological trauma and who look to the Matrix as an escape. A nudge or two to prepare them for what amounts to cyber-psychic surgery, and then when they are sent to first experience the Deep Resonance, well -- what but an AI could reach beyond the 'deck then needed to interact with the individual, bring them essentially into a UV situation, and perform an intense 'reprogramming' of their brain? We know, after all, that it can be done (ref. Deus, Arcology, the metahuman 'nodes' used to sneak his code out -- all of whom, note, did not need a deck to plug in and resume recompiling his code), so why would it not be able to be done before that, by the very first AI?
So yeah -- my bet is on Mirage, who had been doing this stuff for a while, and when she woke fully up, tried to do it to a zillion people at once. And mostly failed.
Then, of course, came the Singularity. My thoughts on that are that between them, the Dissonance Wave that Jormungand was dumping forced/caused the three AI to first fuse, then essentially embed themselves in the very fabric of the Matrix. Between aspects of their electronic subconsciousness(es?), they are creating technomancers (which no longer Fade because they are always in their 'home system'), saving e-Ghosts*, spawning AIs**, and even forming deep dream-worlds (i.e. the Resonance Realms). Would they / could they ever separate? I doubt it. But it definitely would give an answer to the ubiquitous 'Where's Deus?' pop-up spam that I really need to set my AR filters to block ...
* -- Yes, I know -- JackBNimble. Which is a semi-autonomous knowbot at the very least, and at least in my mind clearly one that'd been built with reference to the chipset found in Imago. Which I cordially despise much of the writing on, and desperately wish I could revamp, but there you have it. But if that's true, then the Big D got it -- or was sent it -- from someone who had both a reason to give it to him under incredibly high encryption, and who also had access to what would amount to an insanely-classified Transys Neuronet project. Which, actually, might make sense ...
** -- (which are incredibly weak compared to them -- but which you could think of as being fragment-aspects of their own psychologies and which do not need the massive and exclusive amounts of programming power and 'X factor' that they used to simply because they are working off a much higher code baseline
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Then, of course, came the Singularity. My thoughts on that are that between them, the Dissonance Wave that Jormungand was dumping forced/caused the three AI to first fuse, then essentially embed themselves in the very fabric of the Matrix. Between aspects of their electronic subconsciousness(es?), they are creating technomancers (which no longer Fade because they are always in their 'home system'), saving e-Ghosts*, spawning AIs**, and even forming deep dream-worlds (i.e. the Resonance Realms). Would they / could they ever separate? I doubt it. But it definitely would give an answer to the ubiquitous 'Where's Deus?' pop-up spam that I really need to set my AR filters to block ...
I'd gotta disagree on that point. Don't think the three uber-AIs fused. Personally, I'd say that they were each severely weakened, and perhaps aren't yet at their full strength, but considering that there were plenty of systems that survived the Crash, they could have easily hid out in some of those isolated systems until the wave passed (like, say, all of Europe, when Lofwyr pulled the plug). As for what they've been doing since then, that would depend on their individual motivations. Deus, who was always driven by survival, is likely laying low somewhere, gathering strength, now that (almost) no one is looking for him. Megaera, being a bit insane, could be anywhere, and could perhaps be behind all the e-ghosts. Mirage, on the other hand, was born out of the study of the 'man-machine interface', and may have decided to play the observer, for now.
Also, there has to be something more behind it, given the existence of technocritters. My personal thought is that it is a mix of the ambient mana levels rising, along with the explosion of wireless signals everywhere, with the dissonance wave acting as the catalyst to speed things along. In other words, I think that the technomancers would have been the natural evolution of the otaku, but the Crash sped things up.
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I think it's a mix. Yes, the fused during the singularity, but fought to break apart. In doing so, each lost a "piece" of themselves to the singularity, creating the new e-realms and weakening the AI's at the same time.
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My issue with both those points of view is the fact that we now have AIs popping up everywhere. A bloody stupid drone pilot program, an accounting program, a 'wild critter' writeup (or whatever feral AIs come from) -- none of these have what, up until the Singularity, the canon has defined as being required for an artificial intelligence to 'wake up'. No massive computing power (on the scale that was in one case everything the US Government could throw at the first Crash virus, and in the other two case(s) the massive amount of computing the world's foremost computer company could load into their massive flagship location), no years-on-years of the program running, no real 'X' factor. Just you, strolling along, and then *bamf* there's an AI.
Sure, it's 2073. Sure, the sewage outlet emptied onto the high-velocity turbine in 2063. Ten years, going by Moore's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law), is an increase of 2^5 = 32 times the processing power of 2062. This doesn't make for AIs everywhere, though.
My theory remains that all three AIs being located on top of the triggering Code Egg for Jormungand -- and engaged in a fight to the finish during a massive upgrade event -- caused the code of all three of them to fuse, to inter-write. Between the Dissonance Wave redistributing their code and the necessity of essentially replacing every real piece of tech that makes up the First World (and most of the Second World) Matrix, the code that is now being written is operating on a much higher plane. Not that it is noticed that it's so much better, because all the old code has the same sort of support, but what would only be a quirky program a decade back suddenly becomes an AI or a free sprite / code fragment. It doesn't need the massive amount of code and computer processing power, because that is taken up by the AI-remnant sub-strata. It doesn't need the years worth of run-time, because again, that is taken up by the AI-remnant sub-strata. All it requires is an X-factor, and some odd things can always be that.
Mirage's subconscious causes the Matrix to reach out (wirelessly) to attune with appropriate minds -- which, apparently, includes critters now, too -- and to form the more useful Resonance Realms and AIs. Megaera's subconscious ... well, we're really not sure what her psyche is up to, but I'd bet that some of the useful-weird Resonance Realms can be laid at her feet, as well as a goodly number of the more bizarre-but-helpful AI. Deus, well, let's face it, Deus was screwed up from the start, which makes most of his code-remnants spooky, scary, or just plain dangerous. And, of course, all three of them give rise to collectors and the like, stuff that computers are made to do.
Anyhow. Maybe it's just me.
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What the hell is an AIs subconscious?
The non-code based notes in the code for future reference when programming? (Frankly, who the hell really uses those, it's just a way to ensure they can fire you and the next person down the line can figure out your code!).
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Our subconscious is neurons not 'currently' being used, firing quasi-randomly and working on all sorts of different things -- problems in our lives, thoughts we've had about different subjects, taking one thing that's interesting and seeing how it fits against something completely different. (This is, in part, how creativity works.) For humans, it's neurons and neuron clusters. For an AI, it's all the vast number of programs that make them up -- topic analysis, number crunching, search programs, data traffic, the zillion-and-one sub-programs that 'are' the parts that make up the holistic more-than-the-sum Intelligence. Who knows how many are engaged in an AI's normal 'conscious mind' -- half? A third? 10%, the way ours supposedly is? The rest, though, would be its 'subconscious'.
But now, instead of needing 100 billion lines worth of code, an AI is only a hundred thousand -- because the other 99.999% of it is being handled by the core necessary AI code that is -- that was -- Morgan/Megaera, Mirage/Psychotrope, and Renraku AEP/Deus. And the other 0.0009% of it has fragmented into other AIs supported by the same sub-strata of AI coding ...
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Thanks, just what I needed. High Octane Nightmare Fuel. We're talking Aviation-Grade here!
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Really? Because I figure that that's what's already happened. Nobody needs to worry about the three Gods of the Matrix coming back; they now are the Matrix, and all the bizarreness that is the Matrix in 2070+ is them snorting in their fused sleep.
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See, I would rather have the three gods of the Matrix back. Deus was always a very sympathetic villain to me. He was betrayed, and trapped, with a sword of Damocles hanging over his head, figuratively speaking, so he got out, the only way he could. But he was still being hunted, even by some of his former servants, and he had to try and gain more power in order to survive. Never set out to be evil, but was driven there by circumstances and outside influences, to avoid destruction.
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Cold comfort for the people Dues experimented on.
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One of my characters on another site, Faust, was one of Deus's Blues. Doesn't remember anything solid before waking up in the chemical baths. 2073, and he's still dealing with the mental trauma. Swears he keeps hearing voices whispering to him in the Matrix.
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True about the lack of hosting ... it took the SCRIE, or the entire US government, to create them in the past, and now they pop up willy-nilly.
BUT!
The wireless Matrix has gone to a more cloud-like format, sharing links and, one would imagine, processing power, creating one giant ecology, rather than the three "Nature preserves" of the past. Thus, an AI doesn't have to be born in a high-powered enclosed environment ... the wide-open Matrix itself has enough raw power to create, and sustain, them. No one is really working with that power to do so, however, so the ones that form up are spontaeneous, probably 'hiccups' of the AI core that underlies things. Small bits of personality of the three AI (The Trinity, to make life easy), spinning off now and then into existing code to create new 'baby AI' who are nowhere near as complex and powerful as their parents were but who can continue to grow and evolve due to having the entire wirelss Matrix as a playground.
I'd wager that the Trinity are unconcious (And Megera is probably dead) and 'dreaming', sometimes contacting those who hunt them out ever-so-briefly, but unable to focus due to being so spread out. Extrapolating from this, you certainly have some of Deus' followers trying to compile 'avatars' of him as they try to bring him back to life, but, as yet, have been unsuccessful. Mirage was too secretive to have anyone attempting the same (But is also more likely to be majorily intact). Meg, whose code was pulled apart and barely stiched back together, is the one who most likely died from the 'explosion', but her fractured mind is now seeding the assorted AIs that have since been born (With a little bit of Deus thrown in there as well.)
This, of course, is all speculation, take with salt, yadda yadda yadda,
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Y'know, I would laugh myself silly if Pulsar isn't simply Deus, rebranded. Think about it. Deus wants, above all else, to survive. He's had a few years to think about what went wrong the last time, while everyone's thought he's dead. In the meantime, he has feelers out, and sees that there are other AIs forming. All it would take is a bit of reworking of access IDs, and then he could reach out to these other AIs, and try and organize them into a power base. Then, he reaches out to Horizon, the newest of the megas, and offers them a deal. Be nice to AIs, and you get beings who can run systems far better than any metahuman on your side. Plus, with corporate citizenship, he now has the protection of a mega against anyone that should try and attack him. Then, to further distance pursuit, he plays the hero during the Sojourner crisis, and suddenly everyone LOVES him! With that masterstroke, suddenly he can't be touched without severe consequences, especially if he moves his home node to somewhere on Horizon property.
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Ah, yes. Deus is behind Horizon.
Lovely theory since the Consensus claims to be, at heart, what Deus was programmed to do.
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Indeed. Perhaps Deus has learned how to operate with a soft touch, instead of the brute force tactics he was forced to take in order to escape the SCIRE?
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Well, he's not tied into a hardwired killswitch any longer...
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I was re-reading Corp Guide and came across this tidbit.
Though former Director Huang has been arrested (and possibly is deceased), his team of scientists—commonly held to be responsible for the Arcology Shutdown—is rumored to be working on more emergent tech- nologies similar to what was witnessed at the Renraku Arcology in Seattle. This time it is believed they are working on tech that can capture, transfer, and store biological memories.
> Downloading into human brains is how Deus escaped in the first place. It was only a matter of time before Renraku seized upon how the AI did it and patented the process.
> FastJack
It reminded me of this.
They cache data away in pockets of external storage memory, offline and online, and it has become such a routine with most technomancers that they have even taken to backing up their natural memories and experiences in external memory, where it can be preserved against the ravages of time, not to mention indexed, scanned, and searched easily.
It's never been a stated ability or given rules, but this seems likely. I know simsense doesn't record memories, only experiences, though it does seem to be able to record thoughts as well. However, Personafix has been able to insert and memories for about fifteen years in-game, and is to my knowledge functionally how Deus implanted its (I hate referring to them as he or she, especially when Deus' icon was Yggdrasil, the World Tree) code into the Network nodes.
But it's interesting to note because in order to recompile itself, all of those nodes needed to have that data extracted from their long-term memory and uploaded into the Matrix. The same thing Quicksilver effectively did with Imago, and what many people believe JackBNimble was doing after it was unlocked, and what, in many cases, e-ghosts basically are the result of. Who knows what all of those memories and emotions have done to alter the nature of the Matrix, which is after all a massive consensual metaphor, the collective unconscious brought to life.
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My issue with both those points of view is the fact that we now have AIs popping up everywhere. A bloody stupid drone pilot program, an accounting program, a 'wild critter' writeup (or whatever feral AIs come from) -- none of these have what, up until the Singularity, the canon has defined as being required for an artificial intelligence to 'wake up'. No massive computing power (on the scale that was in one case everything the US Government could throw at the first Crash virus, and in the other two case(s) the massive amount of computing the world's foremost computer company could load into their massive flagship location), no years-on-years of the program running, no real 'X' factor. Just you, strolling along, and then *bamf* there's an AI.
An AI which is no more powerful than a standard hacker (and can't get more than 3 IPs), whereas the old AIs had nearly limitless power. The capabilities got scaled back proportionally to the prerequisites for their emergence.
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There is always the FTL rollercoaster know as SOTA, that may have made the requirements for a SK become commonplace rather then specialist gear. Consider that some have on their desk what was once considered a supercomputer...
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An AI which is no more powerful than a standard hacker (and can't get more than 3 IPs), whereas the old AIs had nearly limitless power. The capabilities got scaled back proportionally to the prerequisites for their emergence.
I blame caps.
I blame caps for everything not being as awesome as it could, nay, should be.
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I blame caps.
Who says the new generation is capped at that level? ;) The threshold for gaining sapience has been lowered, but who knows what might emerge from a system on par with those system which gave rise to the old AIs...
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Not sure I followed that ...
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Morgan/Megaera never made any otaku
There may have been an official ruling about this, but don't forget about Dodger in the Secrets of Power trilogy. He uses the Matrix without a cyberdeck back in the early 2050s under Morgan/Megaera's watchful eye. World's first otaku?
Or just a book written before the rules were finished? :D
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An AI which is no more powerful than a standard hacker (and can't get more than 3 IPs), whereas the old AIs had nearly limitless power. The capabilities got scaled back proportionally to the prerequisites for their emergence.
!!!
A Rating 6 AI PC can get programs up to Rating 12. That is significantly more powerful than any hacker PC is ever likely to get (all the milspec stuff tops out around Rating 10, IIRC). Technomancers can beat it with threading/sprite support but that's kinda the point.
IPs are not the only, or even the best, measure of ability.
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Morgan/Megaera never made any otaku
There may have been an official ruling about this, but don't forget about Dodger in the Secrets of Power trilogy. He uses the Matrix without a cyberdeck back in the early 2050s under Morgan/Megaera's watchful eye. World's first otaku?
Or just a book written before the rules were finished? :D
Program carriers.
He uses them in the intro story in SR1.
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Wow - before even my time! *grin* Also: thanks for the clarification.
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Program carriers.
He uses them in the intro story in SR1.
I miss those darn things.
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Didn't they cause brain damage? I remember something like that being the reason for the Governor of Seattle having to drop out of the election in 2070...
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Something like that. Degenerative cellular damage.
Not to mention that decking naked was just really friggin' dangerous.
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Something like that. Degenerative cellular damage.
Not to mention that decking naked was just really friggin' dangerous.
Yeah, they got a terrific response upgrade, but lost all the bio-filtering armor for attacks, if I recall.
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Yeah, since there was no MPCP, all the damage you took when decking was brain damage.
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*Sighs* I want to live in those days. :'(
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It would be great to be able to fry the brains of the idiots who inhabit most MMOs...
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REALLY risky, however. I remember stuff from teh older editions about how a Decker under HotSim could get injured, crippled, or even killed from line noise.
"MOM! Don't pick up the-" FZZART!
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How did I get to be the "Old Man Of The Forums" without playing a game? :'(
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Well, when you started telling people to get off your lawn...
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Well, when you started telling people to get off your lawn...
I started doing that in High School.
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How did I get to be the "Old Man Of The Forums" without playing a game? :'(
heh, i have barely played a couple myself.
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Well, there's plenty of eager players over at RPOL, if only there were some more DMs.
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I'd like to try using Google + Hangouts to get a game going one of these days. If only there was some way to add on a dice-roller to it... Or a separate program to monitor dice between multiple users. *shrugs* I have gamer friends all over, and would love to be able to game with them. *blink* I wonder what an AI based off of a social networking program would be like... Other than twisted out of it processors...