[Sengir]

Regarding the logic there.  I'm assuming during the roughly 10,000 years of the 2nd and 4th ages at least one magical civilization reached a level of complexity requiring a magical Internet to function.

And based on your assumption, what you assume is true. That is indeed logic, but the circular variety of it...

ED is a typical high fantasy world. Such worlds do not have internet, neither magical nor otherwise.

[Mirikon]

Dragonspeech is NOT Resonance. Using dragonspeech to make/read memory crystals is essentially making a magical imprint upon the object of the desired information. It is NOT some kind of magical matrix.

[grid_hopper]

Regarding the logic there.  I'm assuming during the roughly 10,000 years of the 2nd and 4th ages at least one magical civilization reached a level of complexity requiring a magical Internet to function.

And based on your assumption, what you assume is true. That is indeed logic, but the circular variety of it...

ED is a typical high fantasy world. Such worlds do not have internet, neither magical nor otherwise.

I would say the logic there is pretty sound. We know of the various ages i nthe fantasy setting, how they end and begin in a succession.....

To assume that a given age has no influence on the successive ages is a closed logic or circular logic as you posted.
A pretty sound way to play the game as magic in present timeline shadowrun is not nearly as prevalent as in prevoius ages so long ago......

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Then you don't understand logic, fenris_s.  "The Resonance is a magical matrix made sometime in the last twenty thousand years by a highly-advanced magical society, because sometime in the last twenty thousand years (corrected the timeline there, sorry) a highly-advanced magical society requiring a magical matrix must have existed.'  This is nearly the perfect definition of circular logic - Y exists, made by X, because in order for X to exist, they must have made Y.  In point of fact, no - a highly-advanced magical society does not require some sort of 'magical matrix'; it only requires realtime person-to-person communication, which you can get simply from magic mirrors / crystal balls / scrying pools / whatever is similar.

The sharing of information is - like democracy and republic ideals - an aberration in regards to its existence in society.  Keeping secrets is far more prevalent, when you measure how much time has been spent.  Earthdawn - you know, Shadowrun's official 4th World society cluster, with the highest level of magic to be found in the official Shadowrun world, and which is in fact nearly at the peak of the magic cycle - neither possesses a 'magical matrix' nor has the cyberpunk credo of 'information wants to be free' nor has anything but a master/apprentice transfer of information, especially in regards to magic.

If chris_m2000 - or you, fenris_shonen - want to fantasize and play at your table with 'Resonance is an ancient magical Matrix', we aren't stopping you.  But don't for a second believe that the logic that says it is so is anything but circular - or requires assumptions that are massively illogical and/or against the published works.

[grid_hopper]

Earthdawn references the 1st trhough 3rd ages, the setting is in the 4th.
Shadowrun references the 4th and is set is the end of the 5th and beginning of of 6th....

There is no assumptions in thoes writings. Unless you only go by the Shadowrun reference to the 4th through 6th ages....
Which is fine. One can assume that there is no fantasy history beforer the 4th age.

But there is.
Very straight foward.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

... wow.  You are so mistaken on so many levels.

1st Age - No Magic.  Therefore no highly-magical society.
2nd Age - Age of Dragons.  No highly-magical non-draconic society - and dragons have already shown they have no need of some 'magical Matrix'.
3rd Age - See 1st Age.
4th Age - Earthdawn.  The highly-magical society shown does not have a 'magical Matrix', and information on magic is passed on primarily from mentor to student.
5th Age - See 1st Age.
6th Age - Shadowrun.  No magical Matrix, except what you create in your own head.

YOUR presumptions are that there is some unidentified highly-magical liberated society in which the working classes ("Oh, there you go, bringing class into it again ...") are also directly and proportionately represented within the government - a situation which has existed generally only for the last couple hundred years, a point you seem to miss.

Use your Occam's Razor.  What's more likely, something that we can explain with all the pieces we have, including modern science as we know it?  Or creating some fantastical society with a higher level of magic than has been shown to be capable of existing in the Earthdawn/Shadowrun universe without the Horrors coming through and with such a highly-democratic agenda that large volumes of information not only can be but need to be exchanged with large enough volumes of people that an intricate mystic network of data exchange must be created?

Dude.  If you think the latter is more likely, you'd better make sure the cops don't knock on your door and scent what you're smoking.

[grid_hopper]

I think thoes are your presumptions since you are the one who said it.

Every age does have a connection to Astral, or at least references it. Therefore a working magic language is present.
The 5th age, before the awakening, had astrally aware beings and the like. Which translated into magically aware beings, even though is was a small minority....
And wasn't it mentioned eairler that Astral beings created what we consider the real world in these settings?

That is what I Assume/Presume. 

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

I think thoes are your presumptions since you are the one who said it.

... no, no I didn't.

Regarding the logic there.  I'm assuming during the roughly 10,000 years of the 2nd and 4th ages at least one magical civilization reached a level of complexity requiring a magical Internet to function.

And then you came in with this, in support of it:

I do remember reading about realms, magic in general in previous ages and how communication and memory was the purpose. Magic being a language, it's a natural engine for creation and a candidate application....

Now, how about the actual matrix being an extension of the concept, borrowing form the magical language? Not very efficiently since VITAS, CFD are the appearent results.
Technomancers being a regressive step back to magic? A natural step as the ages seem to end with an ultimate peak of magic awareness.

Magic is not a language, any more than physics is; you can decide that, at your table, in your world, magic is a language, but to my (fairly thorough) knowledge of the Shadowrun world, your existence of magic being 'communication and memory was the purpose. Magic being a language ...' is fairly void - unless, of course, you can come up with some sort of textual evidence for this?  Give us a book and a page, and then we can talk.

Otherwise, you're continuing to spout personal fantasies right next to chris_m.

[Parker]

     Overall, I find myself in partial agreement with ya, Wyrm.   The circular argument  being applied to justify that the Resonance Realm will become the 8th world's Astral is ridiculous.  But it was revealed by certain in-house designers, back in the FASA days, that the 3rd and 5th Ages were not zero-sum rated, but positive waves.  Though barely there, they still contained a level of magic untouchable by only a few.  Otherwise, ya wouldn't have the EIs' and others, (whose magic would now be limited to alchemical artifacts and thaumaturgical knowledge, causing hijinks while the dragons slept.     Magical loci existed, though extremely rare both in the landscape and in a extreme minority of individual who could no more cast spells, individually, nor at 'Awakened' levels then your average 'D&D' adventurers' could come across a crashed space-ship and harvest the ray guns within to replace their swords with.  I say 'individuality' because long and time-consumeing rites and ritual spell-casting were necessary to accomplish what now, in the 'Awakened' world, could be cast by a single magic-user with a single thought.  The Astral and it's inhabitants existed but only in certain spots would the barrier between planes be thin enough to allow spirits and others to contact us mere humans. And this is the first 70+ years of the 6th age.  How powerful will magic users get by the time when the 'Threat' finally arrives a millennium down the road.                    Fenris; technology will have assured (Meta)humanity's existence off-planet before the century is out so we can leave Earth to the A.I. robot rebellion.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

*dryly*  I'm aware of mana spikes, yes, and the immense effort to cast even the 'simplest' of 6th World magics.  (And I think you mean 'touchable by only a few.'  And your use of 'zero-sum rated, not positive waves' is suspect at best.)  That information is there in the fiction, and doesn't even need an interview to discover.  The fact remains that during the 3rd and 5th Worlds, humanity continued to technologically advance and mentally develop, and that no highly-magical society requiring a mystic Matrix would rise during such a period.

As for the rest of your post - the magical world is a reflection of the rest of the world.  For the first time, magic is being treated both as an art and as a science, on a scale not previously conceiveable.  The 1st-4th Worlds may have been wondrous in their way, but their magic was still only a reflection of the society in which they existed - and those societies, by and large, did not share information with each other in such a ready manner as we do today ...

[grid_hopper]

    ........                 
 Fenris; technology will have assured (Meta)humanity's existence off-planet before the century is out so we can leave Earth to the A.I. robot rebellion.

And vampires. don't forget the vampires. *LOL*

[Parker]

And vampires. don't forget the vampires. *LOL*

     It will be difficult for 'Infected'  to act out or get 'predatory' on the generational ships sent on colony missions.  Whether ya want to play the mystical weakness of sun-light.  And before you scoff, let me remind ya that space, while appearing dark, has ever-constant sunlight spearing through.  If the GM want's to play it more scientific, then he/she can simply make them vulnerable to UV radiation/light.  Either way, tough for a vampire to play 'Alien' intruder and pick off the ship's crew and colonists one after another. :}

[grid_hopper]

And vampires. don't forget the vampires. *LOL*

     It will be difficult for 'Infected'  to act out or get 'predatory' on the generational ships sent on colony missions.  Whether ya want to play the mystical weakness of sun-light.  And before you scoff, let me remind ya that space, while appearing dark, has ever-constant sunlight spearing through.  If the GM want's to play it more scientific, then he/she can simply make them vulnerable to UV radiation/light.  Either way, tough for a vampire to play 'Alien' intruder and pick off the ship's crew and colonists one after another. :}

I was actually commenting on the possibility of Infected being left on earth.....
They seem to naturally resistant to the matrix and AI based epidemics. They are immune to CFD for example.....

[Parker]

There's a new app game for your android phone; AI's vs Infected!!