When reading SR4, p.236, it hit me - Sprites can go "uncontrolled" just like Spirits . That is, they can act independently, at least for a time. Now, we all know that Spirits of sufficient power can go free and roam the physical and astral worlds under their own control for an indefinite time, maybe even centuries or millennia, and be fully sentient.

Now, following the same logic, can Sprites go free just like Spirits (and thus create many, many small AIs! ) or is it the ripped-and-pasted Magic rules used for Technomancers driving me to the wrong conclusions?

Or is the transformation of Otaku into Technomancers being Deus' way of reproduction?

I'd say we'll have to wait for the hacker expansion book to find out.

i recall a story in traget:matrix about a person being aproached online by a daemon from a otaku he knows. the daemon wants to tell him that his friend is no longer among the living.

sure, this is in the open season section of the book, but it sounds like the writers where playing with the idea of free sprites.

Ofc sprites will be able to go free.. its so obvious that they will one day.. just wait for the book.. =)

Or perhaps they did that to make us think they would absolutely do that and won't...

Or they knew we would figure that out so they decided to do it anyway.... or not... or...

... I think I burst a blood vessel....

Normally, I don't throw in movie quotes into threads willy-nilly, but this one was begging for it:

Did you make that really, really hard to read on purpose? Or was it unintentional pain stabbing me in the eye just moments ago as i worked my way through that line after line? Good quote selection though.

Agent Smith just strikes me as a monospace font kind of guy, you know?

Agent Smith is the überest guy in da whole matrix.. until part 2 and 3 of the matrix that is.. then it just gets.. ....

And in the 2.0 Matrix there seem to be lots of independent matrix entities around...

So I'd say yes.