Why (imho) the new Matrix is stupid, Might be controversial but is something I would like to discus... Options

[Sturmlied]

I am a very scientific minded person and it is my believe that a things in a game universe (like Shadowrun) should make sense within in the context of this universe.

The Sixth World is based on our universe to a not small degree and while technology developed a bit different the foundations are the same, the science behind it is the same and the thoughts people have when designing something are not that different.

This said I can’t wrap my head around the new Matrix. If find the whole idea as presented in Data Trails so stupid that no amount of suspension of disbelieve currently helps me overcome this.

So I wanted to get you opinion on this and thusly turned from a long time reader into a first time poster. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I also want to add that this started with Technomancers, while Otaku made sense to me I also think Technomancers should not work in the context of the Shadowrun Universe.

But now to my point about the matrix.

Let me start with a quote from Data Trails:

In sum, hosts hold humanity’s labor. It’s where we shape our evolution and destiny.

Hosts are what makes the matrix and according to this quote hosts are essential for our existence. This might be hyperbole but not to far from the truth, the matrix in the Sixth World is essential for civilization.

Another quote:

It would appear nobody understands the Foundation. Even the masters of the Matrix, the powers-that-be that supposedly control things, don’t seem to exactly know what’s going on.

THIS is the problem I have!

The matrix is technology, science, not magic and wishes. Actually it was established from the beginning that magic and technology don’t do well together.
So even with the matrix so vast, so huge that nobody can know the extent of it, the technology behind it, the science is something people should… NEED to know.

Why would the corporate world, after two devastating crashes make something and then depend on it for there very existence if they don’t even have the slightest idea about the scientific basis of it?
This goes against logic, self-preservation and basic human survival instincts in my opinion.

And how does this even happen? A system designed by (meta)humans even one so vast and based on such distributed computing (that is what the matrix is) does not suddenly change it’s scientific and technological principals to such a degree that nobody understands it.

What is interesting is that hosts aren’t computers. A host does not exist in a server. You can’t grab a computer and say “this is a host.” Hosts exist in the Matrix. So how do you “get” one? Again, the Foundation comes up. From what we understand, hosts are molded, grown, some designers say from the raw stuff of the Foundation.

This makes no sense as well. As is said the matrix is technology and has to run on something. In 4e my understanding was that this is basically distributed computing. The matrix runs on you commlink, nexus, toaster, t-shirt and all the other stuff.
With 5e they did not rebuild the matrix, they just rewrote the protocols and did something they don’t understand and is fundamentally idiotic?

Again…why would a corporation store their life blood, their most valuable information somewhere they not only can’t control, they also don’t even know where it is physically and scientifically.

Imho it would be more realistic if the Corporate Court looks at the matrix as it is described in Data Trails and goes “Nope… scrap that we start a new!” because nobody understands it, it is unnecessary complicated and at best dangerous as hell.
The whole idea behind the new matrix protocols was more control for them…. But they gave up all control of the technology, scientific basics… the things that actually matter for controlling the matrix? They gave up all physical control of their information?

Building a new matrix from scratch would be less risky by a factor of infinity!

[Savar]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif) can't disagreed with you..... my sense of disbelief must be better then yours.

[JanessaVR]

@Sturmlied:

I can't disagree. This whole "Foundation" business is staggeringly stupid; no one is dumb enough to build the backbone of the new matrix on something they don't understand at all! Just stay with 4e - my slogan: "It's not perfect, but it's still better than 5e."

About the technomancers, our house rule is that they're Awakened, and essentially another type of magician. Because you're quite correct, there's no way their abilities work according to the laws of physics. But, no worries, this setting has magic, so they must be magical.

[Sturmlied]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif) can't disagreed with you..... my sense of disbelief must be better then yours.

Mine is usually pretty good but this is bothering me more than I like. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

@Sturmlied:

I can't disagree. This whole "Foundation" business is staggeringly stupid; no one is dumb enough to build the backbone of the new matrix on something they don't understand at all! Just stay with 4e - my slogan: "It's not perfect, but it's still better than 5e."

About the technomancers, our house rule is that they're Awakened, and essentially another type of magician. Because you're quite correct, there's no way their abilities work according to the laws of physics. But, no worries, this setting has magic, so they must be magical.

Yea my last and current group both prefer 4e but where thinking about switching to 5e... but decided against it for multiple reasons.

As for Technomancers... we decided they don't exist. Otaku do though. The "it's magic" explanation is something I would grudgingly accept as well. But I find it a bit lazy of an explanation, because for three editions it was said that magic and tech don't mix well and suddenly a kind of magic appears that is specific to tech?

I think I would rather houserule that Technomancer need some device purely for the connection... any wireless enabled device that has a dni would do.

[lokii]

Pretty much the same for me too:

To me this seems to go from one extreme setting description to another one:

My initial problem with the switch to the new Matrix protocols was how smooth the transition appeared to be for what by all rights should have been a migration nightmare. How complete the compliance was for something as intrusive as a constant centralised scoring of somehow flawlessly identifiable illicit interactions. To me that seemed to go against the idea of the Matrix as this incredibly arcane and layered network infrastructure, since of course nobody ever builds a new Matrix as nobody will build a new Internet. You just repurpose parts or add to it. [Digression: I bet there is a Bitcoin mine somewhere in China, that is run as an off the books side project. Only the owner has died, the techies get paid automatically from the mining income and churn on as slaves to the machine. In the history of the Sixth World that has only happened a million times.]

Now this is fixed with another extreme: It's alright. Actually while it appears as if GOD and the Big Ten are in control, their grasp of the underlying technology that gives them that control is so limited that at any point some nifty hackers could find a way around it, if they aren't beaten to it by some Matrix-born super-consciousness. You never know when one of those shows up. The leadership of the triple-A tier has somehow agreed this arrangement works for them (or fallen prey to a system administrator conspiracy--system administrators with a mad scientist complex to be specific). Somewhere in this the line "This freaky Dodger guy says, it will all work out fine, now if we could just help him find his decompiled girlfriend?" must have been uttered.

[Mantis]

Yet another agreeing with you OP. In fact your arguments are ones I've made before when we tried to play 5th ed. Tech is not magic and must obey the laws of physics. If you are just going to ignore those laws then you may as well just be playing a fantasy game not set on Earth. When those basic rules we know are tossed it is very difficult to maintain your suspension of disbelief. It also makes it very difficult to play since you can't take those basics for granted.

[KCKitsune]

Yet another agreeing with you OP. In fact your arguments are ones I've made before when we tried to play 5th ed. Tech is not magic and must obey the laws of physics. If you are just going to ignore those laws then you may as well just be playing a fantasy game not set on Earth. When those basic rules we know are tossed it is very difficult to maintain your suspension of disbelief. It also makes it very difficult to play since you can't take those basics for granted.

There is also the idiocy of the "enable wireless to do (XYZ)"... a great many of them should have been BASIC abilities of the cyberware in question.

Catalyst was trying too damn hard to make Deckers vital to the game... and failed badly.

As for the technomancer thing... I always thought of them as real psionic ability (no, I think the "psionic" tradition was idiotic and insulting) because with the RAW, they were never affected by mana fluctuations, and even worked in space. Hell, I even wrote rules (and posted them here) for Psions in Shadowrun.

[SpellBinder]

IIRC, a great many of them were basic in SR4, and IMO deckers were already vital to several game aspects then as well. Hell, a friend ran a brief SR5 game and the team decker never did what was intended of deckers in SR5 in combat, and that was shoot a full auto shotgun instead of trying to find something to brick.

One of the things I think that really hurt the suspension of disbelief in the transition between SR4 & SR5 is the lack of a time gap. There was a good gap between SR3 & Crash 2.0 to SR4, so it was believable about the implementation of the new wireless matrix, the disappearance of cyberdecks for commlinks, and technomancers. Between SR4 & SR5 it's like, snap your fingers, and all of a sudden there's cyberdecks all over the place, a heavily segregated matrix, and hobbled technomancers.

[Sturmlied]

To me this seems to go from one extreme setting description to another one:

My initial problem with the switch to the new Matrix protocols was how smooth the transition appeared to be for what by all rights should have been a migration nightmare. How complete the compliance was for something as intrusive as a constant centralised scoring of somehow flawlessly identifiable illicit interactions. To me that seemed to go against the idea of the Matrix as this incredibly arcane and layered network infrastructure, since of course nobody ever builds a new Matrix as nobody will build a new Internet. You just repurpose parts or add to it.

O_O I did not even think about this! I worked as a server admin for a few years and should have remembered how long it took to plan and implement major changes to just a few docent servers. Doing that on this on the matrix level would take ages!
Especially because you are absolutely right that a even semi-realistic matrix would have (like the internet) grown over time out or earlier iterations, different systems, different operation systems, on different update levels, running on different devices, where some maybe an old deck in some guys basement or a coffee maker from 2059 in an old office building, not to mention millions of rfid tags.

Now this is fixed with another extreme: It's alright. Actually while it appears as if GOD and the Big Ten are in control, their grasp of the underlying technology that gives them that control is so limited that at any point some nifty hackers could find a way around it, if they aren't beaten to it by some Matrix-born super-consciousness. You never know when one of those shows up. The leadership of the triple-A tier has somehow agreed this arrangement works for them

Here I disagree with your earlier statement:

since of course nobody ever builds a new Matrix as nobody will build a new Internet

Because metahumans are not inherently stupid and that goes for corporations as well and if something like the new matrix (technological and scientific problems set aside) would happen they would not bet everything they have on a system that they know can blow up in their faces at any moment for a illusion of control.
Starting from scratch with something they understand and can control seems more logical to me and the corporate court has the power to it... it would cost a shit load of money but far less than the new matrix would cost them if it blows up.

Somewhere in this the line "This freaky Dodger guy says, it will all work out fine, now if we could just help him find his decompiled girlfriend?" must have been uttered.

Oh, Dodger thinks it's going to be ok? Then I am ok with it. What could possibly go wrong? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

IIRC, a great many of them were basic in SR4, and IMO deckers were already vital to several game aspects then as well. Hell, a friend ran a brief SR5 game and the team decker never did what was intended of deckers in SR5 in combat, and that was shoot a full auto shotgun instead of trying to find something to brick.

One of the things I think that really hurt the suspension of disbelief in the transition between SR4 & SR5 is the lack of a time gap. There was a good gap between SR3 & Crash 2.0 to SR4, so it was believable about the implementation of the new wireless matrix, the disappearance of cyberdecks for commlinks, and technomancers. Between SR4 & SR5 it's like, snap your fingers, and all of a sudden there's cyberdecks all over the place, a heavily segregated matrix, and hobbled technomancers.

There is also the idiocy of the "enable wireless to do (XYZ)"... a great many of them should have been BASIC abilities of the cyberware in question.

Catalyst was trying too damn hard to make Deckers vital to the game... and failed badly.

I get that idea behind, to give deckers more options from their core skill to do in combat and this would be good thing but the implementation was stupid. My favorite example from this is a silencer that can hear other shots when wireless is on? WTF?

Q1: WHY? IN JEFFS NAME! WHY?
Q2: Why would I want to hack a silencer? Does the silencer not work anymore when I hack it? Can I after hacking disable the padding in the silencer so it suddenly does not absorb sound?

And again the general question with the whole "everything needs wifi, even my gun" thing is: Why should anyone want this if it makes a already dangerous situation far more dangerous?

My tip is that this is something every writer for Shadowrun should ask himself for everything he or she writes!

And there was already a lot to for a hacker with a smart gm and some creativity. I like the Watch_Dogs approach (while the game was flawed some ideas are great), hacking the environment to give the team an edge.
A few years back I played a bit with hacker that made it a habit to look at everything in and around the target building, from waste disposal, sprinklers, lighting systems, sound systems, etc.
In one of our first runs against some gang, he first slowly raised the volume of their music to give our team an edge sneaking in. When our streetsam could not resist killing a guy for doing things to an unwilling woman and combat broke out he turned of all the lights in the building, locked doors for the gangers and used a trid and a fridge to distrect some gangers.
He also made some of the gangers comlinks that he could hack into call their moms.

[KCKitsune]

And there was already a lot to for a hacker with a smart gm and some creativity. I like the Watch_Dogs approach (while the game was flawed some ideas are great), hacking the environment to give the team an edge.
A few years back I played a bit with hacker that made it a habit to look at everything in and around the target building, from waste disposal, sprinklers, lighting systems, sound systems, etc.

In one of our first runs against some gang, he first slowly raised the volume of their music to give our team an edge sneaking in. When our streetsam could not resist killing a guy for doing things to an unwilling woman and combat broke out he turned of all the lights in the building, locked doors for the gangers and used a trid and a fridge to distrect some gangers.He also made some of the gangers comlinks that he could hack into call their moms.

See this what Catalyst SHOULD have been thinking about rather than "Let's make it so hackers can brick peoples very expensive cyberware and cripple them!!!"

Also I would like to know WHY skinlinks (greatest upgrade for guns in SR4) so suddenly decided to fail?

I know the Catalyst reason ("Herp Derp!!! Got to make hackers usable!!! Herp Derp!!!"), but in universe, why did skinlinks suddenly not work?

*EDIT* Sorry for the edit, but here is a link to a 2008 article about NTT using the skin for data transmission: Skin Link.

[Sturmlied]

See this what Catalyst SHOULD have been thinking about rather than "Let's make it so hackers can brick peoples very expensive cyberware and cripple them!!!"

Also I would like to know WHY skinlinks (greatest upgrade for guns in SR4) so suddenly decided to fail?

I know the Catalyst reason ("Herp Derp!!! Got to make hackers usable!!! Herp Derp!!!"), but in universe, why did skinlinks suddenly not work?

*EDIT* Sorry for the edit, but here is a link to a 2008 article about NTT using the skin for data transmission: Skin Link.

One could (but should not) say that matrix tech is optical based and that is why skinlink does not work.

But....

a. tech was already based on optical data transmission when skinlink was still working
b. just because most of the data is transmitted via light does not mean that other form of transmissions don't work anymore, otherwise wireless transmission would all be laser based and would suck!

As for rl implications:

our body transmits electric signals all the time. I am not very knowledgeable in that field but the biggest hurdle that comes to my mind for this would sending signals through the body that are ignored by the body.

[lokii]

Here I disagree with your earlier statement:

since of course nobody ever builds a new Matrix as nobody will build a new Internet

Because metahumans are not inherently stupid and that goes for corporations as well and if something like the new matrix (technological and scientific problems set aside) would happen they would not bet everything they have on a system that they know can blow up in their faces at any moment for a illusion of control. Starting from scratch with something they understand and can control seems more logical to me and the corporate court has the power to it... it would cost a shit load of money but far less than the new matrix would cost them if it blows up.

The point I wanted to make is you don't built a replacement for the matrix (all of it) and switch over. If the Triple-As had built a new matrix core and then forced the smaller corporations and all other stakeholders into the new infrastructure, a gradual expansion, that would be more plausible. I would still say sorry, you missed your chance to tell that story with the Crash 2.0 when it was really plausible. The corporations had the opportunity to built a tightly controlled matrix, they don't do it but a decade later it occurs to them that they really should have? Because Danielle de la Mar is a compelling public speaker??

Anyway, they didn't built a replacement matrix: There might be some new infrastructure but in the main the old matrix was converted to new protocols and for some reason the whole of the network surrendered.

[Savar]

Heh, background in computers, now I do security systems. If I could not ignore inconsistencies in shadowrun the matrix would never had worked for me. As 1st ed violated to many real world rules to begin with. And the wireless stuff starting with 4th ed makes my skin crawl of i think about it. So i just go cool story, no reality.

[DeathStrobe]

The thing is that the old Matrix technically never went away. Hell, technically the internet never went away.

Echo Mirage was using full VR direct neural interfaces pre-Crash 1.0. Theoretically, Matrix 3.0 or whatever it is, is probably backwards compatible all the way to ARPANET. The problem is that the old protocols are hideously insecure, so no one uses them, or if they do it's probably represented with a low firewall rating.

As for upgrading the entire Matrix, SR4 already established software patching rules and software degradation. So most people in the setting get free automatic updates without needing to do anything. Upgrading and patching are solved problems now, and by the 2070's it's going to be even easier. While its true that upgrading an Enterprise network is basically nightmarish in our modern times, people in the Sixth World have been forced at least twice to rebuild their entire networking infrastructure due to global crashes. What on earth makes you think that people haven't solved upgrading networks when it seems to happen every 30 years?

As for people using software they don't understand, you clearly are not programmers. I can assure you when you divide something by 0 and get 0, infinity, -infinity, null, 1, and sometimes just crash; depending on the language, you realize maybe computers are not all knowing and perfect. Where do you think bugs come from? In 60 years in the future our programming paradigms will be completely obsolete and the idea that people literally have no idea how anything works is actually a pretty realistic proposition.

[Sturmlied]

As for people using software they don't understand, you clearly are not programmers. I can assure you when you divide something by 0 and get 0, infinity, -infinity, null, 1, and sometimes just crash; depending on the language, you realize maybe computers are not all knowing and perfect. Where do you think bugs come from? In 60 years in the future our programming paradigms will be completely obsolete and the idea that people literally have no idea how anything works is actually a pretty realistic proposition.

I disagree on this one. Yes a programmer might not understand anymore how the matrix works in every details. That what programming languages are for, they are abstractions so that a programmer does not have to write code like this:

01101001 01101110 01110100 00100000 01101101 01100001 01101001 01101110 00101000 00101001 00100000 01111011 00001010 00100000 00100000 00100000 01100011 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 00111100 00111100 00100000 00100010 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01010111 01101111 01110010 01101100 01100100 00100010 00111011 00100000 00101111 00101111 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101001 01101110 01110100 01110011 00100000 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01010111 01101111 01110010 01101100 01100100 00001010 00100000 00100000 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110100 01110101 01110010 01101110 00100000 00110000 00111011 00001010 01111101

But show this to someone making a living designing new cpus and I am very sure they know exactly what this means.

As for the matrix, it is realistic that Pete Programmer sitting in his Evo office and designing new programs does not know every thing about how the matrix works. But it is absolutely unrealistic that there are no scientists or engineers anywhere who know exactly, to the smallest details how the matrix works (I am talking about combined knowledge).

That is especially true seeing your first argument:

The thing is that the old Matrix technically never went away. Hell, technically the internet never went away.

We very clearly understand how the Internet works and not until the new matrix came along no iteration of the matrix was described as this "mystical" place (ok.. the Technomancer stuff but this also makes no real sense). But suddenly people forgot everything that computer scientists, engineers, system designers, etc. learned and created over more than 100 years?

Shadowrun is heading on a way where technology is more mysticism than science.

Edit:

I forgot this:

As for upgrading the entire Matrix, SR4 already established software patching rules and software degradation. So most people in the setting get free automatic updates without needing to do anything. Upgrading and patching are solved problems now, and by the 2070's it's going to be even easier.

We are not talking about a software update. We are talking about a fundamental change in how the matrix is structured, this is a more massive change than the implementation of IPv6 and it happened more or less overnight.
Actually it is like saying:

"Here is IPv6 it's awesome! You have a week to switch the whole internet over to it by next month or nothing works anymore!"

To put that in perspective... IPv6 was first introduced in 1998 and it was suggested that all severs should be able to handle it by 2012. But IPv4 is still used today.

[lokii]

If I could not ignore inconsistencies in shadowrun the matrix would never had worked for me. As 1st ed violated to many real world rules to begin with.

Actually I had less of a problem with the original matrix. It was this quirky Cyberpunk idea (from the people who brought you "cyber") of a computer network built around brains. If you think about it even inter-machine communication without any involvement of people is rendered for an observing brain as streams of datapackets. What makes it even more strange, is that the all of this virtual architecture was initially built just for specialists. The idea being if you want to get real work done you had to manipulate the matrix directly with your brain. I think it's only in the course of the 2050s that the datajack starts to become ubiquitous.

So, it was always obvious to me that such a network was really different from our technology. It had very special requirements to securely interact with a brain and the interaction was not about, say, reading and changing code but a more intuitive manipulation of high level objects relying on awesome subconscious brain computing power that did the actual work. It was easy to accept because it was so different despite that it's probably nonsense. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

On reflection I could accept a semi-mystical "Foundation" in the same way. Let's say we go back to the idea of an arcane, layered network. To manage this monstrosity the corporations have turned up automation and self-learning processes and sacrificed understanding and now you have this strange matrix undercurrent that somehow works though they have no idea why -- fingers crossed it doesn't blow up in their face. I could buy that. My problem is how we actually have arrived there.

Why did the Triple-As agree to revamping the matrix in the first place? They wanted stronger control but that seems to be built on sand. I almost want to say literally on sand because one metaphor for the Foundation is the ocean floor. A different way of asking the question is: Did the Triple-As know that the new technology was poorly understood? Also it seems that the new matrix levels the playing field between the corporations. Before Renraku had a lot of control over the Asian grid. Saeder-Krupp was dominant in Europe. (Of course it was never clear what controlling a grid actually means. Though there is the example of Lofwyr switching off the European grid on Crash 2.0 which largely spared it from destruction.)

Why is everybody on board with overwatch? A corporation has a highly secure host but as a base-level function of the new matrix protocols information about activities in their host, even if only those taken by an intruder, are communicated to an outside entity.

Why are there no underground networks running the old matrix protocols? It goes back to everybody has surrendered. I guess the Foundation is the new underground network, but even before there should have been small networks that resisted migration. Let's say a highly secured AA corporate research PLTG because the company doesn't trust all the promises of GOD and the Triple-As about how this new highly classified matrix tech will make them more secure.

As for upgrading the entire Matrix, SR4 already established software patching rules and software degradation. So most people in the setting get free automatic updates without needing to do anything. Upgrading and patching are solved problems now, and by the 2070's it's going to be even easier. While its true that upgrading an Enterprise network is basically nightmarish in our modern times, people in the Sixth World have been forced at least twice to rebuild their entire networking infrastructure due to global crashes. What on earth makes you think that people haven't solved upgrading networks when it seems to happen every 30 years?

As for people using software they don't understand, you clearly are not programmers. I can assure you when you divide something by 0 and get 0, infinity, -infinity, null, 1, and sometimes just crash; depending on the language, you realize maybe computers are not all knowing and perfect. Where do you think bugs come from? In 60 years in the future our programming paradigms will be completely obsolete and the idea that people literally have no idea how anything works is actually a pretty realistic proposition.

But your latter argument is exactly the problem. First to the software updates: Unless the matrix is built to regularly roll out new protocols as Sturmlied says we are talking about a something quite different from a software vendor with a robust update mechanism. Where do migration problems come from? Design flaws, implementation flaws, missing standardisation or missing standard compliance. I think you argue that those still exist, well then it is unlikely that migration has become a smooth process. In fact when a global crash burnt down a huge chunk of your network that might be the only time to consider fundamental changes at every other point it should be too expensive and too difficult to coordinate. And I would add that's especially true because the most important matrix stakeholders of the Sixth World are highly competitive and hostile peers.

On the other hand even if we go with the idea of a flawless update scheme for the whole of the matrix I would start to wonder how hacking is possible at all. Beyond social engineering hacking is based on exploiting the kind of flaws that should make such an endeavour difficult to achieve.

To put that in perspective... IPv6 was first introduced in 1998 and it was suggested that all severs should be able to handle it by 2012. But IPv4 is still used today.

And let's not kid ourselves if we wouldn't be running out of addresses very few providers would be interested in switching over.

[DeathStrobe]

I disagree on this one. Yes a programmer might not understand anymore how the matrix works in every details. That what programming languages are for, they are abstractions so that a programmer does not have to write code like this:



But show this to someone making a living designing new cpus and I am very sure they know exactly what this means.


As for the matrix, it is realistic that Pete Programmer sitting in his Evo office and designing new programs does not know every thing about how the matrix works. But it is absolutely unrealistic that there are no scientists or engineers anywhere who know exactly, to the smallest details how the matrix works (I am talking about combined knowledge).

That's not true though, as processors are so complex now that people don't understand how they work. Here is an experiment from a few years back showing just that.

We very clearly understand how the Internet works and not until the new matrix came along no iteration of the matrix was described as this "mystical" place (ok.. the Technomancer stuff but this also makes no real sense). But suddenly people forgot everything that computer scientists, engineers, system designers, etc. learned and created over more than 100 years?

Shadowrun is heading on a way where technology is more mysticism than science.

The idea isn't that people forgot how the internet works. The idea is that the Matrix has become so complex that no one understands it. It's built on high level abstractions on top of higher level abstractions. Everything has already been solved, and computer programs are writing themselves where it's basically unintelligible madness to try and reason out how it's really working. The most efficient code is the least human readable code.

I think the problem is that you have faith that computers work because we understand them, and while you might be able to understand one small facet of how a computer works; to understand the whole is something very different. The idea is by the 2050's they were approaching the singularity. By the time we hit the super AIs SR became a post singularity society. Computer programming is evolving so quickly that it's impossible to figure out how the mesh network actually works. Literally technology got so advance that it's rewriting metahumanity to add to the Matrix.

[Medicineman]

Maybe it's a ....Faith thing ?
Just like lots of People have Faith in a higher Being ( no matter what's the Name ) that helps and protects them
the People in SR have "Faith" in the Matrix.
And since You can't argue with Logic against Faith, those People in SR that know what a Risc the Matrix is can't get the Decision makers ( Corp Execs ,Presidents, etc)
to change their Mind .
(so they cross their Fingers, hoping that everything keeps working, knowing what a Danger lies ahead)

HokaHey
Medicineman

[Blade]

There could be some Singularity effect here: an evolutive Matrix system that self-improves to resist hacking and evolved past metahuman comprehension.
Sure, that would be a strange move for corporations that have faced the Renraku Shutdown and the Deus threat, but it's not technically impossible.

[Sturmlied]

There could be some Singularity effect here: an evolutive Matrix system that self-improves to resist hacking and evolved past metahuman comprehension.
Sure, that would be a strange move for corporations that have faced the Renraku Shutdown and the Deus threat, but it's not technically impossible.

Yes it is technically impossible but imho highly unlikely that this would happen by accident. Technology is to a very high degree predictable. Parts can fail but they don't suddenly start to do something completely different from what they where designed for unless it is designed to evolve.

But my argument that this would not happen because the Corporations are not idiots and we come to the point Medicineman made:

Just like lots of People have Faith in a higher Being ( no matter what's the Name ) that helps and protects them
the People in SR have "Faith" in the Matrix.
And since You can't argue with Logic against Faith, those People in SR that know what a Risc the Matrix is can't get the Decision makers ( Corp Execs ,Presidents, etc)
to change their Mind .

After two crashes, Deus and a host of other AIs, a onslaught of hackers and even though I don't like them Technomancers.... I think it is very unlikely that enough people will have faith in a system that is 100% unpredictable, can crash at any second or even worth with all the computing power can become a sentient being MUCH more powerful than Deus.
It goes against everything corporations stand for. They inherently love and NEED predictability and stability. Faith has little room on the board of directors who want to know how much richer they and the shareholders will be in 1 year, 2 years and 5 years and where "Trust me! This will work even though nobody knows why" is not an argument for them when most if not all of their money depends on it.

Greed > Faith was, is and might always be true.

Using evolving circuitry might a cool thing to help design stuff, like it is sometimes used today, but actually using it to run the world is like giving a 5 year old access to your credit card and dropping him off at the mall saying "You go boy! I trust you!"... just a gazillion times more stupid.

That's not true though, as processors are so complex now that people don't understand how they work.

The researcher in the article did not understand how and why some parts of the chip was used but that does not mean that he did not understand the chip. Even the best processor might be complex because of the many parts but works on logic gates who are not that difficult by themselves.
And there is a difference between not understand how something works and not knowing how something is used.

And there are reasons why this tech is only used to create other stuff right now. Because people are not stupid enough to use unpredictable technology where it counts.

The assumption that a system can get so complex that nobody can understand is also imho false. Quantum Mechanics is not just complex as hell it is also confusing and very very very hard to research. Yet here we are learning and understanding more things about it.

There are tons of things we humans don't understand and much much much more we might never understand, half of what we know might be wrong but the thing is that we strive to understand, to learn. Humanity at a large is the universes toddler asking a gazillion stupid question all the time in order to learn!

Give it a few more years, a few more decades and maybe we will know how evolutionary computing works.

[Sengir]

We very clearly understand how the Internet works

But would we know if one of the components understand was in fact replaced with something that works the same from a black box perspective (just looking at inputs and outputs), but whose internal workings are absolutely unfathomable? Let's say Google has some kind of magic box in their basement, which computes their Page Rank algorithm super effectively, but if you open up that box all you see is gray gel and a few cables going seemingly nowhere.


That is basically what I would imagine the foundation like: The interaction with the rest of the matrix is specified, but how it does its thing is not. Of course the story for the general public is not "we have no idea, something emergent" but something involving proprietary trade secrets, need to know, and security through obscurity.

[Sturmlied]

But would we know if one of the components understand was in fact replaced with something that works the same from a black box perspective (just looking at inputs and outputs), but whose internal workings are absolutely unfathomable? Let's say Google has some kind of magic box in their basement, which computes their Page Rank algorithm super effectively, but if you open up that box all you see is gray gel and a few cables going seemingly nowhere.


That is basically what I would imagine the foundation like: The interaction with the rest of the matrix is specified, but how it does its thing is not. Of course the story for the general public is not "we have no idea, something emergent" but something involving proprietary trade secrets, need to know, and security through obscurity.

That is not how technology works, unless we assume some alien intelligence build it according to some logic we are not capable of understanding. Even the brain is something we learn more about everyday, we know a lot about the fundamental principles of how it works.

If google had a device like this, someone at google build it and has some understanding of it. Even if we assume that it is based on self evolving circuitry it would still be based on technology we understand and we would only need time to understand how it does what it does.

[Jaid]

That is not how technology works, unless we assume some alien intelligence build it according to some logic we are not capable of understanding. Even the brain is something we learn more about everyday, we know a lot about the fundamental principles of how it works.

If google had a device like this, someone at google build it and has some understanding of it. Even if we assume that it is based on self evolving circuitry it would still be based on technology we understand and we would only need time to understand how it does what it does.

also, before putting it in charge of all the things ever, we would make sure we understood it first. especially if just last year, technology that we didn't understand which was connected to everything just broke all the things. and even more so if that's the second time poorly understood technology broke all the things in the past few years. it doesn't take long for people to start recognizing that kind of pattern.

[KCKitsune]

My thought on this is this: If the Corps allowed some "unknown factor" to control the Matrix, what's to stop that factor from deciding "Screw you guys! I'm going home!" and crashing the Matrix in such a way to make The Crash & Crash 2.0 look like an erotic massage from Playboy bunnies?

There is WAY too much money in the Matrix to allow ANY "x factors" to exist.

[lokii]

That is not how technology works, unless we assume some alien intelligence build it according to some logic we are not capable of understanding. Even the brain is something we learn more about everyday, we know a lot about the fundamental principles of how it works.

If google had a device like this, someone at google build it and has some understanding of it. Even if we assume that it is based on self evolving circuitry it would still be based on technology we understand and we would only need time to understand how it does what it does.

Well, a self-modifying intelligent system that develops faster than its change can be tracked could be regarded an alien intelligence.

The way I understand it the Foundation developed without being monitored by the corporations. They discovered it and thought, hey why not built on that. I guess there is the alternative it is an emergent phenomenon of the new matrix coding/technology and was discovered afterwards. But since it seems you have to "grow" all hosts from the Foundation, they had to be aware of it from the beginning, after all that's a basic feature.