Print is not dead!, Low tech response to the corp controls Options

[Snow_Fox]

People have been saying for years that print is dead. Newspapers and magazines are failnig and now systems like amazon's Kindle means some people don't even have to carry books. I would expect that trend to expand more, why have a bookshelf groaning under the weight of books when you can just have a device the size of a single book there instead? BUT as runners evolve I think print will have a resurgance.

In RL I was looking at my work e-mail and was reminded that if you use corp systems to e-mail anything, there is the risk that it will be read by the corporation. That's pretty standard, so much so we created the temrs 'work safe' and 'not work safe' for stuff we send to each other on someone else's time.

Well by the 2070's human nature is not going to change but corp controls are even tighter. I mena there are parts of town you can't even walk in without an active comm unit running so you can be identified. For all that we think runners are cutting edge, to be fair at the higher levels corp deckers and mages have more resources and can be just as good or better so they can peer into any dark corner of the matrix to see what you runner or corper is looking at, reading, scheduling etc.

It occured to me that the way around this is something not in the matrix at all. The written word on a hard copy. A book, a magazine, a newspaper that can be printed to spread word away from the controls of a corp and who's source was untraceable. DLN's husband said when he was in school they were going to close up a cold war bomb shelter in his HS and several of them created a time capsule there by hiding an old hand worked printing press, matterials and some Communist propaganda sheets in the area before it was sealed- a teacher helped them. The door was covered by tons of timber for the wood shop but should that ever been moved and someone goes in long after the actors are long gone...

The corp might not like you reading certain books- look at modern China in RL but it becomes much harder to control if a corper has a copy of Catcher in the Rye or Animal Farm in her purse.

A runner's plan of a target's shcedule might be picked up in the matrix- lots of search activity around X sir, but the trail ends when the stuff is just written on a piece of paper.

Lastly nothing is ever really erased in the matrix, evidence can always be found, but a lighter and a few minutes can destroy the evidence of paper.

What do you think?