Once apon a time calculators were not allowed in schools, they were "cheating". Now they are routinely a requirement.

Essence loss from a datajack and similar uninvasive cyberware isn't going to hurt the average wagemage very much. The benefits outweight the risks.

I'm not convinced that there would even be an unaugmented category in sports in 2070. Consider the following three factors. Firstly, any kid at school or afterwards who would previously have been considered very strong, or fast, or agile, is now moderate or mediocre. The competitive element that leads one to develop these attributes doesn't sit well with coming 8th after all that effort. Only the very few who knew for certain that they would compete in some major international unaugmented sports would bother handicapping themselves for all those years. Secondly, viewers will be more interested in the augmented sports. Certainly there will still be those interested in natural competition but it's nothing compared to the sight of two bone-laced, synth-muscled 350lb boxers having at each other. The natural would be like certain very exaggerated forms of martial arts where there's nothing but form. Sure, there's a beauty to it, but lets not pretend it's the real thing, anymore. Thirdly, sponsorship will go the same way, too. Remember that companies now have the opportunity to promote their products in an even more convincing manner. Fuck providing the latest 1500m champion with his shoes. Our corporation manufactured his legs!

Regarding the knowsofts being banned in school, you are may be right. But even now, we're living in a society where most office workers can look up whatever formula or data with a few keystrokes, but we're still assessing children on their ability to memorise facts. Now, I know a search engine isn't a substitute for learning. But it's more of a factor than it used to be. And in the SR future, not only are people able to access this information even more conveniently than today, but the information will be much much more copious and complete. Not long ago an architect would do his sums with a slide rule and a calculator. Now he uses CAD tools and software that will work much of the stresses and strains, et al. for him. By 2070, surely he's just sketching out a room layout and letting the computer place the supporting walls and ordering whatever quantities of material are needed. So it makes me wonder just what they will be teaching children in schools in 2070 to make them useful workers. Certainly retention of facts wont be the most important part of teaching. It might be that knowsofts are banned, but it might also be that first class on a Monday morning is how to properly use knowsofts.

(Note: this isn't necessarily how I see our future, but it's how I see the grimy future of Shadowrun).

Uhm, the whole point about SkillSofts is that there are only implants required, no training.

But the flavor doesn't support this. Magic starting at 1 is just a character creation mechanic. Logic and Intuition start at 1, as well, but that would be the equivilant of all babies in the world being born with a learning disability. It makes no sense. Charisma starts at 1 but babies are naturally saccharine and cute. It makes no sense.

It is just a character creation mechanic. It takes massive essence loss to completely burn out magical talent.

That depends... it's never been strictly defined each way, there are hints to both possibilities.

Only for certain classes. The more basic the math class, the lower the tech allowed.

Yes, I attended an engineering school. There were calculators allowed in certain classes, but the type of calculator allowed was very specific....

The point being, you have to know what to put into which equation for the 'soft to be of any use. It doesn't matter if the 'soft can do perfect trigonometry if you don't know how to get the data the 'soft needs (eg. properly measuring an angle).

That's SR3 thinking. In SR4 essence loss *hurts*. It used to be that Magic 6 was the default, and a Magic attribute of 4-5 was substantially the same. Now the Magic attribute likely starts at 5, and the actual (statistical) average is somewhere around 2-3 before essence loss. So, even if nothing else changed each point of Magic lost due to essence affects the average mage PC 33% more, and for NPCs with a Magic of 2-3 it affects them up to three times as much.

But the game changes are to more than just what the attribute number averages to. Now the Magic attribute is added directly to most magic-related tests, in addition to its previous roles in determining the various limits to what spells you could cast and what force spirits you could summon. In comparison, before the Magic attribute only added one-third its value to spell pool calculations.

Though this number is higly speculative, I estimate that a single point of magic loss affects most PC mages about twice as much as it did in SR3. In practical terms it could be much more than that, because in SR3 there were few practical difference in terms of long-term ability between the Magic 6 mage and the Magic 5 mage. This difference will be even greater if you look at the average wagemage, who by the SR4 book have Magic attributes of 2-4 (look at the "Lieutenants" on p. 274-ish to look at what the above-average mages have for attributes.)

Math SPUs *did* come with a math knowsoft pre-installed, at twice the rating of the SPU. The point is that being able to do the calculations is useless if you don't know what the numbers mean. Sure my knowsoft can do a surface integral of a three-dimensional vector space; it doesn't matter if I don't know what a surface integral is used for, or more importantly how I can use it to solve this physics problem in front of me, and that's something a mathematics knowsoft won't help me with.

By your argument there's no reason to actually learn any non-magical skill at all, and people in 2070 should just chip everything.

To expand on Valentinew's post, many of my college midterms and finals were open-book, open-notes, any-calculator, bring-a-computer-if-you-want tests. I can tell you right now that for almost every student there was an inverse relationship between the amount of reference materials brought and used, and the final grade in the class. Loading an encyclopedia into your brain is no substitute for actually understanding the material, I don't care what century you're in.

That said, brain-mods will likely be a big deal in say the 2050s, when they were a new idea, and that generation will likely see a high percentage of upper-income parents tossing performance-enhancing mods into their kid's skulls with reckless abandon. By 2070 though those kids will have grown up, and studies will have shown that, like the kids who are growing up on growth hormone today, or the kids whose minds were melted by "whole language" teaching in the 1980s, screwing with kid's minds at young ages merely leave them burned-out husks by the time they grow up.

In fact, I say that by 2070 the government will have gotten involved in its knee-jerking way and have outlawed any sort of "unnecessary surgery" in juveniles under the age of 18. Some freaks will still be getting fake "prescriptions" for brain surgery, like parents do today to get their kids on Ritalin, but the practice will likely be on the downward spiral.

Dude.


There is a world of difference here. When you're chipping a soft, you actually gain the appropriate ranks equal to the chip's rating. you don't need know a damn thing about trig for your skillsoft to tell you how to use it (and since mathematics is an academic, not applied skill, it probably woulden't require a full set of skillwires,) and the SPU backs it up.

The only thing is that you can't use Edge or Pool with them.

But honestly... You're not chippin' Dodge for doding bullets or Long Arms for sniping here. You're chipping freaking mathematics. That's a freaking knowsoft, and really, if you can't do it with Logic + Rating 3 Knowsoft + 3 dice for having a Maths SPU....

Then frankly, it's way beyond high-school level math, and probably beyond college level math. If 6 + Logic dice isen't enough to pass the threshold on whatever task you have, you're involved in rocket science here.

I remember that one too; it was called "Burning Bright." The protagonist's kid wanted a datajack to play video games "right," even though she was only eight.

Kyle's (the protagonist's) response to the possibility seemed to indicate that allowing a kid to get an implant at that young an age was a really irresponsible thing to do though.

true, but using a knowsoft teaches you nothing, when you remove it all the knowlage is gone. Using a calculator still teaches you the more complicated math.

Knowsofts would be permissible in some very soft subjects, or subjects that use active skills (know soft java system functions when doing a programming assignment). Probably as often as open book tests are today.

If you tested history and allowed using a history know soft then the entire class would get 100% because one kid had a adaptive knowsoft and had it access the text book before cracking its copy protection and giving it to the rest of the class.

In a test to assess ability to find information (today we have research assignments) a know soft would be useless. For such a test to be effective you would not tell the students the subject before time.

I agree. Knowsoft class on Monday morning, we will introduce a psychotropic code into the chips and get the students behaving themselves for the rest of the day.

What the class teaches isn’t so much using a knowsoft as finding the appropriate knowsoft and knowing when a knowsoft is inappropriate (such as when your using an activskill). It would also touch on the uses of skilsofts, Linguasofts, mapsofts and datasofts

Even with instructor chips there would still want to be “teachers” you think parents are going to give up the free daycare aspects of school. The teacher will probably have all the skills of a school nurse and enough computer skill to get the kids plugged into there instructor chips, if she didn’t have these before she chips them

Edward

Yeah, he was a mage, though I'm not sure what you mean by "purist."

That chipped personality thing sounds a bit like Fantasy Baseball.

As far as adepts - I heard that adepts are pretty much hated by most of the sports community. People see them as "cheating" (never mind the fact that cybernetics are allowed in a lot of sports...)

Plane crash. She was one of two survivors, both of whom ended up in full-body replacements.

Y'all are thinking about "school" in the wrong way. If you're in a world where the "schools" let you use knowsofts, do you really think they're going to be testing you on information recollection? Sure, that may be one of the benchmarks used in 2000's-era schooling, but information recollection is worth almost nothing if you're dealing with a bunch of people with chips in their heads and knowledge at their fingertips.

Instead, what you're going to be getting in corporate schools is education in employable skills (chipped Negotiation, Auto Mechanic, or Hacking just don't work as well as the real thing) with a heavy focus on knowsofts and the like as tools. If the kid doesn't test in the upper end of mental capability, why bother *actually* teaching him something like calculus or chemistry? The thing he's going to become (Bartender/Auto Mechanic/Secretary) doesn't require an in-depth knowledge of those skills. My idea of SR's corporate environment is that a *huge* number of the "wage-slaves" are engaged in administrative or service jobs, which can be taught in trade-school type environments (or over a hot grill). As far as the corporation is concerned, there's no reason they should go out of their way (and pocketbook) to teach anyone who's not "Gifted" stuff they're not going to use. And at the same time, they're creating what's almost a worker caste... loyal to the company and limited in options.

What's going to get taught in standard schools (as opposed to the "gifted" schools, which will probably be taught in a way more familiar to us) is preparation for a job in the company, doing something you're personality matched (or adjusted, depending on your game) to want to do and be good at, with the use of knowsofts being as commonplace as looking something up in the encyclopedia when you need to know it.

An example: an accountant who's working with subcontractors probably has skills like Finance, Mathematics, Ettiquette... the kind of stuff he's going to be using every day. But, let's say he finds himself one of several accountants working with a construction subcontractor on getting some roads built for his employer. The old method of thinking says "if you go read up on construction techniques, concrete grades, issues with urban construction, local geology, union law, construction hardware, and all those other things, you might be able to provide your employer with a benefit." And yeah... today, an accountant with a pretty good understanding of all those things would be more desireable, because he can communicate better with the subcontractor, know when he's looking at legitimate costs versus skimming, and all that good stuff. But it takes time and effort to learn all that, it makes you a bit of a niche worker (you're going to keep getting stuck with jobs like that) and it may turn out to be a waste of time (there weren't many hangups, and the subcontractor didn't try to screw you).

The accountant who's got some background on proper application of knowsofts would have looked at what he was getting into, and sunk a bit of his paycheck into getting knowsofts in those applicable skills. No real time spent on his part, he's got the knowledge of a professional working in those fields in his head on day 1, and if nothing else, his employer probably made some money selling him the knowsofts. "Good work, Jacobsen... thinking ahead and getting yourself chipped for the latest construction techniques saved us a bundle, when you realized they were going to use that outdated method. I think there's a place for you in middle management..."

You know how people are always saying "Man, I've never used a bit of the history/calculus/biology/physics/metal shop I learned in high school!"? Megacorporations would much rather you pay back some of your paycheck to have someone who actually knows what they're doing handle your services then teach you at some point how to fix the problem yourself. Why teach people a lot of stuff they're not going to use? It's expensive, and if they're destined to run a till in your corporate coffee shop for the rest of their lives, that expense is something that hits their bottom line.

Unfortunately, the rules don't really reflect this. True, there is the absense of edge, but that only means that chipped skills are underperforming for lucky heroes in life-or-death situations. In most applications of these chipped skills I don't think people are spending all that much edge. Does the auto mechanic really spend edge to fix your car a little faster?
According to the rules, the chipped auto mechanic and the regular auto-mechanic perform exactly the same, at least until they get into the auto-mechanic showdown, ultimate auto-mechanic championship and start spending edge.
I wish the rules supported your claim better, I really do (and for the record I agree with the majority of your post), but as they are the rules make chipped skills *almost* just as good as learned skills. For some skills this doesn't really both me, but for others (like social or language skills) it really seems like they should be limited in some way, more than they are.

When your car mechanic realizes right before he sends your car home with you that he hasn't properly attached the oil drain plug (saving you a snacked engine when it tries to run without lubricant in a few more days), he avoided a critical glitch by using Edge.

When your 14 year old computer tech freezes while reaching for Enter, then carefully goes back and changes one of the flags in the command line he just entered (saving you a bunch of deleted data), he just avoided a critical glitch by using Edge.

When your paper is due in 90 minutes, and you've still got 3 pages to go, and you pound out the remainder and still manage to get an A-, you just added Edge to your roll, used a couple of the successes to drop the time required for the test, and spent the rest to jack your grade up.

If you want to make "Edge" into something we can think about in real-life terms, it's what lets us realize we're making a mistake at the last minute before it's too late, or really pour on the effort to turn out a result we didn't think we could. Skillwires take that away, and while most of the time (in game) that's not a huge problem, every once in a while you're going to encounter a situation where it'd be really nice to roll Edge.

Skillwires are cheap as hell in SR4, cash and essence wise. You can max them out at rating 5 and only spend 10k and 1 essence....Be real easy to afford alpha though. It's buying all the softs that cost you, but they aren't that bad.

My bad... Skillwires for all, yaaay!