Going Macro: Life Without Nanotech, Your thoughts? Options

[lokii]

So to the best of my knowledge, saying that implantation without nanobots used to be done is at least fully compatible with existing fluff, if not already preestablished.

And that I wouldn't dispute.

Still, now that nanotech is used widely for cyberware and is described even as essential, when the technology vanishes overnight, the description of the impact (so far) is too flippant for my taste. It assumes that all you need to do is go back to the old method and under some altered pricing structure everything works as before. But unless the old technology has been developed in parallel the necessity to redesign and really reinvent back to the state of nanite assisted cybertechnology is a real crisis (and that's assuming that the non-nanotech solution is capable of the same kind of performance). You can no longer rely on nanotech retooling, standard procedures of cybersurgery don't work. You have an augmented population that needs maintenance among them probably a whole bunch of augmented cybersurgeons. Certainly the costs for higher cyberware quality grades should go up. And on top of all that some idiot in marketing tasks you with implementing cloud computing features because that supposedly boosts sales.

I don't know if nanotech needed to be reined in. Rebalancing is one thing, taking certain applications off the table is another, but scrapping the whole field? I mean I'm sure nanotech will be back. If not already in the next *ware book then down the line. But maybe nanite use for cybertech should have been exempted from this problem. After all it's primarily the new nanotech that came from Deus. Turns out you shouldn't use design patterns coming from a cruel machine god, surprise! Would have worked better with the fluff.

[Voran]

Personally, I would have preferred another version of handwavium where nanostuff became so easy to counter or otherwise mess with that it wasn't going to be useful outside extremely controlled conditions. It wasn't suddenly less reliable as process, just not something you'd want to use out in public because THEN it was too easy to negate.

This way your cyberdoc can still use nanotech to patch you up or slap new things in, but you don't run into it outside anymore.

[Sengir]

Still, now that nanotech is used widely for cyberware and is described even as essential

OK, let us have a look at the statement from M&M you so desperately cling to:
Nanotechnology is an absolute necessity for all cybernetic surgery, especially for the installation of bone lacing, balance augmentors, retinal duplication, orthoskin and dermal sheathing. Nanotech connects all cyberware to the neural pathways that go to the brain. In addition, nanites are directly integrated into many cyberware devices, including cybereye accessories, filtration systems and chemical immunity and chemical analysis tools.
Piece by piece:

• Bone Lacing: 1st edition
• Balance Augmentor: Actually new in M&M
• Retinal Duplication: 1st Edition
• Orthoskin: Shadowtech
• Dermal Sheath: CT
• Neural Interconnects: 1st Edition
• Cybereye Accessoires: 1st Edition
• Filtration Systems & Analyzers: ST

So out of all the items for which nanobots (seemingly considered synonymous with nanotech in general by the author) are described as even more essential than usual, only ONE is actually new since the invention of these magical buggers...
Bottom line is what I already said: Even for (then as now) hyper-advanced stuff like Cybermancy and MBW, fluff does implicate nanobots as necessary. We might lose the Balance Augmenter though, OH NOES!
(Edit: Balance Augmenter is in SR5, take the noose off)


@Fatum (and TJ):

Sensor RFIDs are capable of basically the same trick, so it's not a game changer of any kind.

The difference is that sensor RFIDs are not tiny robots which violate logic by their very existence and are able to manufacture microelectronics outside cleanrooms on top of that.

[lokii]

OK, let us have a look at the statement from M&M you so desperately cling to:

Desperate? Let's slow down here.

I think, we are arguing different things. I'm not actually discussing the discrepancies between Shadowtech and Man & Machine. But I guess I should. Nanotech was retconned to be more important in the field of cybertechnology than was described before Man & Machine. While Man & Machine seems to point at Shadowtech especially with the comment about misnamed nanites, I believe they mean an earlier era (and I wasn't clear enough about this before). For example they also say "True nanites are more precise and versatile, allowing larger devices, including limbs, to be implanted without such a loss of Essence that the body would shut down." There are cyberlimbs already in first edition, so nanotech must have been in use back then too. So the Shadowtech information has been retconned, at best can be explained as outdated. How does that work with Leonora Bartoli? I have no idea.

You seem to dislike this change and probably didn't arrive at the same conclusion that nanotech applications in cybertechnology predate Shadowtech. Well, I take the retcon at face value, especially as a slighty modified description made it into Augmentation and affirmed the new version. So cybersurgery for two decades or more uses nanotechnology. That's the starting point for my argument.

Now a different question is whether the situation is really so bad if you go back to the old method. I don't think the description of the (supposed) science behind nano- and cybertechnology enables us to make that call. So indeed I'm taking my judgement from "would not exist without", "staple of surgical installation and implantation procedures", "absolute necessity" in Man & Machine and Augmentation in a totally undesperate way I hope.

So, maybe I'm not giving Catalyst enough credit and this is basically a ret-retcon.

[Fatum]

Sengir, do you know what the words "absolute necessity" mean?

Also, you and me can produce microelectronics outside of clean rooms, without even being able to manipulate molecules directly as the nanobots do (ymmv as to how "micro" those resulting "microelectronics" are, though).

[Tzeentch]

If the magical hard nanites get reigned in I'm all for this. Actually nanotechnology getting nuked wouldn't make any sense; that would be equivalent to saying "The chemistry skill got infected with a virus."

[Voran]

If the magical hard nanites get reigned in I'm all for this. Actually nanotechnology getting nuked wouldn't make any sense; that would be equivalent to saying "The chemistry skill got infected with a virus."

SHUT.DOWN.EVERYTHING.


/apologizes (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Fatum]

If the magical hard nanites get reigned in I'm all for this. Actually nanotechnology getting nuked wouldn't make any sense; that would be equivalent to saying "The chemistry skill got infected with a virus."

Nano-produced AKs melted, remember?

[Elfenlied]

If the magical hard nanites get reigned in I'm all for this. Actually nanotechnology getting nuked wouldn't make any sense; that would be equivalent to saying "The chemistry skill got infected with a virus."

But that's what they did. They dropped a bridge on Nanotech.

[lokii]

If the magical hard nanites get reigned in I'm all for this. Actually nanotechnology getting nuked wouldn't make any sense; that would be equivalent to saying "The chemistry skill got infected with a virus."

If you think of materials science, I don't believe that is meant by nanotechnology, just submicroscopic machinery or its bioengineered equivalents, so hard and soft nanites.

[Sengir]

While Man & Machine seems to point at Shadowtech especially with the comment about misnamed nanites, I believe they mean an earlier era (and I wasn't clear enough about this before).

Yeah, I didn't really get that point. But I still disagree with it, because the reference to the "old nanites" is just too parallel to the text in ST to make me believe in a coincidence.

The emphasis placed on how new and revolutionary theses nanites are also makes it seem unlikely that they have been around since forever. If nanotechnology "entered a period of exponential growth" after Deus, before Deus the tech level obviously was exponentially lower

Sengir, do you know what the words "absolute necessity" mean?

Also, you and me can produce microelectronics outside of clean rooms, without even being able to manipulate molecules directly as the nanobots do (ymmv as to how "micro" those resulting "microelectronics" are, though).

Do you know what the words "not as necessary as claimed at all" mean? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

And the kind of circuit we are talking about here (camera, microphone, transmitter, thin enough to be nearly fully transparent) is certainly not something you'd etch with OHP film at home...


RE the discussion on terminology: When Drexler invaded Shadowrun, the distinction between "nanotechnology" and fictional "nanobots" got the same treatment as all other science. And judging by the Jackpoint post, that did not change (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Epicedion]

Nanobots simply needed to go. They're the Star Trek transporter of the game -- they seem cool up until you consider the actual uses you can put them toward.

[Sendaz]

Wow, I go away for three days with no internet and come back to a topsy turvy world. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Guess I am not too surprised by this, the potential for nanotech was simply huge and largely untapped. Cyberpunk 202X had some fun concepts for this.

Still it looks like they might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but we will see how the revised versions come along.

[lokii]

The emphasis placed on how new and revolutionary theses nanites are also makes it seem unlikely that they have been around since forever. If nanotechnology "entered a period of exponential growth" after Deus, before Deus the tech level obviously was exponentially lower

Well, the whole chapter starts out with "Nanotechnology has been around in various guises since the inception of the cyberterminal and the end of the Euro-Wars." (p. 80) And it seems that augmentation / medicine was the one field were nanotech had been widely used: "the main focus of nanotechnology before Deus was in the medical field." (p. 84) Once more, I also think that the description of the old method matches Shadowtech and would thus tie that method to the early 2050s. Except you have all the emphasis on the importance of "true nanites" for cyberware in Man & Machine. I mentioned the part about cyberlimbs and to give another example of something that indicates the change to me: "This old-world nanite was responsible for the first implants" (p. 84) doesn't seem to fit the early 2050s where a lot of standardised implants were already available. All this makes me think they retconned it and just wanted to also integrate the old explanation. So in that sense Shadowtech even confirms you need nanotechnology for wiring cybernetic interface and nervous system.

But there is certainly enough room for speculation.

Nanobots simply needed to go.

Or the nanobots could stay and their abilities could be restricted instead.

[FuelDrop]

Want to hear about a character who got seriously hosed in 5th?

Stay-at-home asthmatic hacker with copious amount of neural nanoware.

Primary mode of hacking? Non-viable.
Tens of thousands invested in cutting edge link? Wasted.
Changing to new on-site decking? Asthma.
Nanotech? Probably either dead or brain-damaged.

Yay, new edition!

[RHat]

Nanotech? Probably either dead or brain-damaged.

... Dead or brain-damaged would be a GIFT. There's a reason why one of the going theories entails Inhabitation Sprites.

[Tzeentch]

Nano-produced AKs melted, remember?

-- I'm going to chalk that up to a misunderstanding of what nanotech is. Or they melted from some other mechanism.

[Fatum]

Want to hear about a character who got seriously hosed in 5th? Stay-at-home asthmatic hacker with copious amount of neural nanoware.

We desperately needed that as an archetype?

-- I'm going to chalk that up to a misunderstanding of what nanotech is. Or they melted from some other mechanism.

I'm going to chalk that up to CGL.

[Mikado]

Of course it should be illegal, this is a dystopian panopticon society after all. But if changing your biometrics via cyber is basically unattainable (if you want to fool more than the most basic scanner) and a complete fake ID goes for R*1000 ¥, there is clearly something amiss.

(Disclosure, the "cyber impersonator" is character concept I have always wanted to play. So I'm probably slightly biased (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) )

Agreed... I had an idea for such a character myself, it was just never really feasible to me. Sadly... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

I brought up the false Front system for a reason. It went with the nanoware retinal, fingerprint and voice print duplication on a technomance build I played for a few years. Which is why I said the Smart Staff was broken when you see a pencil box convert to a staff/sword in less than a second but the other stuff takes minutes (even the jigsaw skull) it makes you question the though put into any book...


Best character I ever had by the way... Sided with the Neo-A's when they set off the DOOM chemical in NY... Killed 60,000 people and got away with it... Man that pissed off the rest of the players. (Only that they lost not at me, they thought it fit well with the character since he was written up as a middle eastern terrorist.)

[Fatum]

>War!

>makes you question the though put into the book...

Come on now, we've discussed this enough times.

[Cheops]

Didn't Augmentation also take the non-Runner fields of nanotechnology further? I seem to remember snippets about S-K growing their new Seattle HQ out of wood-producing nanites and mention of cities built of living coral that used nanites in their construction and maintenance. It wasn't my cup of tea for a dystopic society but it did advance the setting into a cool, post-needs direction that made sense.

I thought medkits also used nanotech.

[Nath]

Man & Machine was already mentioning corporate investment in nanotechnology beyond body augmentations, in industry and aerospace.

Actually, if it was to make sense, the neutralization of nanotechnology should also result in the cancellation of the space elevator project. In this regard, that would be another nail in the coffin of SR technological evolution (and now I said it aloud...).

[Sendaz]

Man & Machine was already mentioning corporate investment in nanotechnology beyond body augmentations, in industry and aerospace.

Actually, if it was to make sense, the neutralization of nanotechnology should also result in the cancellation of the space elevator project. In this regard, that would be another nail in the coffin of SR technological evolution (and now I said it aloud...).

I do not think it would stop it entirely, but it would certainly slow it down as it would have to proceed differently using more manageable tech. Or at least we hope not.

[KarmaInferno]

On the stuff that is supposed to just be nanite-MADE, and afterwards have no actual active nanites in their structure, but still somehow got affected by this Sybil thing...

We know that they are SUPPOSED to not have active nanites, but who is to say they don't have them anyway? Snuck into the manufacturing process by whatever is hijacking all the nanotech?




-k

[Fatum]

Nanites degrade quickly when exposed to the elements. Even if you pack a rifle full of active nanites, in a couple of years it will be inert unless there's also a nanohive to replenish the numbers.