Full Version: Reality Filter, AR and VR
| QUOTE (Spike) |
| that's what you get for taking the shortcut. Here's how I see it. YOU use BTL as a personality rewrite, and hacking into someone's brain through hot sim/btl can allow you to alter their memories, personality and more. Welcome to Ghost Hacking. In GitS, a Ghost is a poorly described phenomenon which is essentially the 'personality matrix' of a meatbody. Is it a 'soul'? Who can say, and exploration of that theme DOES show up in the stories, but its not so clear cut. What IS important... from YOUR shadowrun perspective regarding BTL and the brain, is that the Ghost can be hacked. You can insert false memories that are entirely real, you can subvert personalities to make people do things you want them to do, or see things you want them to see. The first (and best) Ghost in the Shell movie had a minor character who had been Ghost Hacked into believing he had a wife and child that he was estranged from. Every time he'd try to call them he'd actually be hacking on behalf of the person who had Hacked HIM. His photo of his dog he saw as a picture of his family. One 'super hacker' in the setting is skilled enough to make everyone see his face as a giant smiley face in real time to preserve his anonymity. Only the exceptionally rare individuals without extensive cyberware are immune to this sort of thing, as they lack the connections that allow their Ghosts to be hacked. I don't see BTL the way you do. According to RAW it's just overly strong emotional tracks making the expirence overwhelming like opiates and synthetic endorphins are. The fact that most BTL's include reality overlays is unimportant. But if you want to run your Shadowrun to include 'brain hacking BTL'... then go to the acknowledge master of the genre for ideas. That's all I suggest. |
This is why I don't like having my terms re-defined for me. BTL, personafixes, and skillsofts can't *DO* any of that stuff. What I described was simply a passive process of "editing the brain". The concept of using technology to make changes to memories and personality is nothing new and certainly nothing that was invented by a single anime series.
Let me be more specific: the concept you are describing as "ghost hacking" is probably unique to that anime series and sounds wicked cool. But none of that stuff is anything Shadowrun technology CAN DO. I gave examples of stuff derived from simple applications of existing (in 2070) technology based on technological principles we acknoledge today as a technical feasability. (If we can just figure out the myseries of that damned brain.)
None of the stuff you described was stuff I picture the BTL interface capable of. None of it! That's the problem with calling it "ghost hacking," it implies an active process behind what is fundamentally a passive application. You can't see the huge world of technical difference between "let's put this memory into his brain so he thinks he has a wife" and "let's give him this memory and alter his subconscious thought processes so he's hacking into someone's computer everytime he thinks he's calling his non-existant wife"?
I suppose Ghost Hacking could be the holy-grail of the BTL interface, but I think misapplying this term is what led to Garrowolf's rejection of the idea in the first place when he said he couldn't picture it in a chip. What you are describing in the anime is an active process regarding the exploitation of a direct connection with a hacker. What I am describing is simply running a program on the brain for a split second - like the difference between "running windows" and "defragging a hard drive".
In the same way that the BTL "brain hacking" interface (or Memory Modification Interface in my new terminology) I am describing is based on assuming existing real-world technological and scientific principles as given and exploring how far you could go with the idea, what you are describing as ghost-hacking is based on assuming the BTL/MMI principles as given and seeing how far you can explore from there.
Shadowrun needs at least two more editions before it catches up with Ghost in the Shell.
Are you sure that it isn't what you were talking about???
Maybe it was someone else, but I thought it was you. Someone here talks about BTL doing personality rewrites and inserting memories into the brain, etc. If not you, then I should be adressing someone else.
BTL is extremely limited to me because to us (unlike Shirow's work...) the brain remains essentially a biological mechanism and only limited to perceiving outside stimulus beyond the grossest changes. Shirow's characters often have 'cyberbrains' and the Ghost is just a personality construct based off a now redundant biological mass... this leads to the question of 'is a Ghost a Soul?' It walks like a soul, quacks like a soul... but can be changed by a few lines of code...
Thus BTL can supply stimulous, but no one can use that stimulous to accomplish much of anything (other than frying you but good)... how you react to that stimulous is entirely dependent upon you. Delusional people with a tenuous grasp on reality by believe their BTL expirences are REAL, but even there, their actual behavior is going to be next to impossible to predict and control.
Maybe it was someone else, but I thought it was you. Someone here talks about BTL doing personality rewrites and inserting memories into the brain, etc. If not you, then I should be adressing someone else.
BTL is extremely limited to me because to us (unlike Shirow's work...) the brain remains essentially a biological mechanism and only limited to perceiving outside stimulus beyond the grossest changes. Shirow's characters often have 'cyberbrains' and the Ghost is just a personality construct based off a now redundant biological mass... this leads to the question of 'is a Ghost a Soul?' It walks like a soul, quacks like a soul... but can be changed by a few lines of code...
Thus BTL can supply stimulous, but no one can use that stimulous to accomplish much of anything (other than frying you but good)... how you react to that stimulous is entirely dependent upon you. Delusional people with a tenuous grasp on reality by believe their BTL expirences are REAL, but even there, their actual behavior is going to be next to impossible to predict and control.
| QUOTE |
| Maybe it was someone else, but I thought it was you. Someone here talks about BTL doing personality rewrites and inserting memories into the brain, etc. If not you, then I should be adressing someone else. |
No, it was me. But there's a difference between re-writing someone's personality (once) and providing a "ghost-hack" that constantly edits portion of the personality and advanced brain functioning from then on. What I mean is that its a lot easier to do a one-time edit of the whole personality than it is to edit a detail like "everytime he sees this picture he will see his wife". What you can do, as you mention below is cause and advanced pre-determined 'malfunctions' like delirium and addiction and such... but that's about as close as you can get. The process of altering or inserting memories in precise pre-determined methods though, is near perfect.
| QUOTE |
| BTL is extremely limited to me because to us (unlike Shirow's work...) the brain remains essentially a biological mechanism and only limited to perceiving outside stimulus beyond the grossest changes. |
Not necessary. Psychotropy is the effect of using drugs and chemistry to make precise personality changes, like curing depression or causing it, for example. Electrical stimulatio has been known to make people remember things or forget things, implying that this could be controlled at will if psychologists and neurosurgeons could figure out the precise connections. We know the meat itself can be modified in such a way as to change the way the "mind" interacts with the body. And electrical stimulation can provide sensory input and output.
Finally, it's a theoretical aspect of much sci-fi that the act of percieving sensory information in any form is an input directly into the brain and by modifying those inputs one can essentially hack into the brain. The principle application of this, as far as I know, is brainwashing. Personafixes are essentially advanced brainwashing through a variety of means, and not ghost-hacking (like substituting your face for a smiley-face in the eyes of everyone who has been ghost-hacked).
I think Total Recall 2070 covered the concept of this BTL interface closer than Ghost In The Shell, although once again I'm quoting awful sci-fi VR movies/television that's probably making Garrowolf grind his teeth right now...
| QUOTE |
| Thus BTL can supply stimulous, but no one can use that stimulous to accomplish much of anything (other than frying you but good)... how you react to that stimulous is entirely dependent upon you. Delusional people with a tenuous grasp on reality by believe their BTL expirences are REAL, but even there, their actual behavior is going to be next to impossible to predict and control. |
I don't see why BTL should be limited to just stimulous in the conventional sense. Even simsense is waaay more than that and BTL is like a super-simsense plugged directly into the brain. It should be able to upload anything. And yes, the dangers inherent in the technology both by the willful design of the programmer and the unpredictable and uncontrollable side-effects are a good reason I imagine the technology has been banned.
Despite the ban on BTL entertainment chips, the corps still maintain a strong market for other applications of Memory Modification Interfaces like skillsofts and personafixes and the overall side effects are either kept away from the consumer's eyes or else regarded as trivial and barely worth mentioning, like the disclaimers on over-the-counter drugs.
The photograph could be viewed as pavlovian conditioning, he looks down and rather than actualy process what he sees, he triggers the memory of what he expects to see.
The hacking was actually pretty elegant, and the character actually understood he was hacking. He thought this guy had taught him how to spoof the phone system to get around paying his phone bill, or something like that... he just completley misunderstood what he was actually doing.
The smiley face dude, as I understand it, was just so damn good he could real time hijack the signals entering your visual cortex to circumvent them. I don't really recall that one myself but I've come across references to it.
A lot of the ghost hacking appeared to be very much like 'hi powered brainwashing' with contitional responses and misdirection. I believe you had bodyguards who were conditioned to kill their client when the trigger command was given (code words, etc) by the hacker or their agent. Like I said, don't take my word for it... the first movie is worth it on it's own merits as generic shadowrun inspirational material. You've got Ruthnium fibre camoflage, wired reflexes, hacking, extensive cyborging, commando raids, intruige and more... hell the first five minutes of the movie involve politicol double dealing, an extraction of a willing target, breifcase SMG's being used to hold of swat/corporate security and a counter extraction assassination by the samurai/ninja/adept (full body borg that looks human, play however you like).
As for BTL as stimulous: All simsense is nothing more that stimulous. You replace the sensory feeds of the biological mechanism with broadcast signals designed to stimulate those portions of the brain. You feed electronic signals for vision, sound, touch, smell, taste.. you feed emotional tracks. All stimulous. We can do the same thing more crudely with direct sensory stimulous and drugs, but encompassing all the senses for 'total immersion' remains beyond us. Ultimately how the person responds to the stimulous remains on them...even emotive tracks will not be perfect. If someone is a devote pacifist with no violent tendencies, the berserker rage track on a neil the orc barbarian chip, no matter how realistic and powerful will feel artifical to someone, and while their brain may be firing up and sending adrenalin coursing through their body, their mind knows it's not natural because that individual is not really neil, no matter how much the stimulous tells him he is.
Someone already prone to rages might go with the flow, and without a RAS override might go physically berserk. Another guy could go running blindly down the street, not running away, just running. A third might simply go rigid as their muscles tense for action that lacks a proper stimulous response... this all assuming they are just expirencing the rage track alone or have not delusionally convinced themselves they really ARE Neil.
Recall, simsence users can tell when an actor has been replaced by the feel of the tracks, the immersion is not perfect. (RAW pg 35, flavor story...)
The hacking was actually pretty elegant, and the character actually understood he was hacking. He thought this guy had taught him how to spoof the phone system to get around paying his phone bill, or something like that... he just completley misunderstood what he was actually doing.
The smiley face dude, as I understand it, was just so damn good he could real time hijack the signals entering your visual cortex to circumvent them. I don't really recall that one myself but I've come across references to it.
A lot of the ghost hacking appeared to be very much like 'hi powered brainwashing' with contitional responses and misdirection. I believe you had bodyguards who were conditioned to kill their client when the trigger command was given (code words, etc) by the hacker or their agent. Like I said, don't take my word for it... the first movie is worth it on it's own merits as generic shadowrun inspirational material. You've got Ruthnium fibre camoflage, wired reflexes, hacking, extensive cyborging, commando raids, intruige and more... hell the first five minutes of the movie involve politicol double dealing, an extraction of a willing target, breifcase SMG's being used to hold of swat/corporate security and a counter extraction assassination by the samurai/ninja/adept (full body borg that looks human, play however you like).
As for BTL as stimulous: All simsense is nothing more that stimulous. You replace the sensory feeds of the biological mechanism with broadcast signals designed to stimulate those portions of the brain. You feed electronic signals for vision, sound, touch, smell, taste.. you feed emotional tracks. All stimulous. We can do the same thing more crudely with direct sensory stimulous and drugs, but encompassing all the senses for 'total immersion' remains beyond us. Ultimately how the person responds to the stimulous remains on them...even emotive tracks will not be perfect. If someone is a devote pacifist with no violent tendencies, the berserker rage track on a neil the orc barbarian chip, no matter how realistic and powerful will feel artifical to someone, and while their brain may be firing up and sending adrenalin coursing through their body, their mind knows it's not natural because that individual is not really neil, no matter how much the stimulous tells him he is.
Someone already prone to rages might go with the flow, and without a RAS override might go physically berserk. Another guy could go running blindly down the street, not running away, just running. A third might simply go rigid as their muscles tense for action that lacks a proper stimulous response... this all assuming they are just expirencing the rage track alone or have not delusionally convinced themselves they really ARE Neil.
Recall, simsence users can tell when an actor has been replaced by the feel of the tracks, the immersion is not perfect. (RAW pg 35, flavor story...)
RE: Skillsofts
Sorry, I didn't get to this one earlier. This is an entirely different topic than Simsense/BTL to me. First, you can't just stick a skillsoft into a simsense player and download it a la 'The Matrix'. The data is encoded on the chip, not onto your brain, and you have to have the right combination of hardware to access that data. You don't actually 'know' anything, the chip does, you just access it. Fluff wise, I'm not even sure the character is thinking he 'knows' anything, it's more like having the worlds greatest interactive database hovering over your shoulder telling you what to do.
With active skills, you need the skillwires, which makes it represent muscle memory that you don't actually have. You have conditioned responses to external stimuli. You can chose to launch a triple backfist combo, sure. That's you telling the chip what you want to do, but in most cases the chip makes many of the descisions for you based off of what it sees and what you nebulously want to happen. Enemy head gets too low, knee comes up in automatic response. You point gun vaguely at badguys, the chip keeps your hand in the right position and when a head pops into view, pulls the trigger exactly the way it was programmed to do. I'd Imagine people with certain active skills and skillwires are even more dangerous than people with active wired reflexes....
Sorry, I didn't get to this one earlier. This is an entirely different topic than Simsense/BTL to me. First, you can't just stick a skillsoft into a simsense player and download it a la 'The Matrix'. The data is encoded on the chip, not onto your brain, and you have to have the right combination of hardware to access that data. You don't actually 'know' anything, the chip does, you just access it. Fluff wise, I'm not even sure the character is thinking he 'knows' anything, it's more like having the worlds greatest interactive database hovering over your shoulder telling you what to do.
With active skills, you need the skillwires, which makes it represent muscle memory that you don't actually have. You have conditioned responses to external stimuli. You can chose to launch a triple backfist combo, sure. That's you telling the chip what you want to do, but in most cases the chip makes many of the descisions for you based off of what it sees and what you nebulously want to happen. Enemy head gets too low, knee comes up in automatic response. You point gun vaguely at badguys, the chip keeps your hand in the right position and when a head pops into view, pulls the trigger exactly the way it was programmed to do. I'd Imagine people with certain active skills and skillwires are even more dangerous than people with active wired reflexes....
| QUOTE |
| As for BTL as stimulous: All simsense is nothing more than stimulous. |
That's why I wanted to flesh out BTL technology in such a way that it was different used an entirely different, illegal, invasive interface.
| QUOTE |
| If someone is a devote pacifist with no violent tendencies, the berserker rage track on a neil the orc barbarian chip, no matter how realistic and powerful will feel artifical to someone, |
Exactly. Now imagine we can modify the parts of the brain that store that latent personality, erasing its resistance to violence. Completely. Nothing else. What would happen? We could roughly predict what the effects would be, but we can't precisely control it.
| QUOTE |
| RE: Skillsofts |
Your analysis of skillsofts and skillwires and how its incompatible with what I'm talking about is dead on. You are 100% absolutely right. But I really like the Memory Modification Interface and it makes sense that if it existed in the world if would mimick these items, if not be outright better. It would be like downloading a skill right into your brain. I also like the idea that these better alternatives would be risky, invasive, and illegal at all levels of society and appalling in the eyes of the public.
| QUOTE |
| The photograph could be viewed as pavlovian conditioning, |
See, Pavlovian conditioning still sounds too advanced and interactive for this tech I'm describing though. I'm not sure. I could see something like this as a side-effect of the addiction, but it just seems like too exact and precise an application. Research into the tech has been illegal for awhile now, and the technology as a whole is still very experimental. It's like extremely buggy beta-software except no one cares what happens to the beta-tester except that he downloads more patches and sticks closely to the non-disclosure agreement.
| QUOTE |
| The hacking was actually pretty elegant, and the character actually understood he was hacking. He thought this guy had taught him how to spoof the phone system to get around paying his phone bill, or something like that... he just completley misunderstood what he was actually doing. |
I could sort of see that then. It still sounds like this would have to be combined with some more traditional brainwashing techniques, though. A little BTL re-writing could definitely make one more suseptible to brainwashing and tear down psychic defenses.
| QUOTE |
| Recall, simsence users can tell when an actor has been replaced by the feel of the tracks, the immersion is not perfect. |
I'm trying to replace the book's concept with BTL with an interface that is entirely different in order to remove it from simsense and provide an alternate tech to play with for my players and the setting in general. The point is that BTL and everything using MMI technology is not simsense. That's the point of all this. I don't like it just being another form of simsense.
| QUOTE |
| The smiley face dude, as I understand it, was just so damn good he could real time hijack the signals entering your visual cortex to circumvent them. I don't really recall that one myself but I've come across references to it. |
This just has no relavence to this discussion hand. You can't use the MMI to physically hack - it's just not that interactive. It has to be pre-programmed.
Although you could do something exactly like this in Shadowrun with AR.
| QUOTE |
| Someone already prone to rages might go with the flow, and without a RAS override might go physically berserk. Another guy could go running blindly down the street, not running away, just running. A third might simply go rigid as their muscles tense for action that lacks a proper stimulous response... this all assuming they are just expirencing the rage track alone or have not delusionally convinced themselves they really ARE Neil. |
Yeah... this is sort of more how I picture the application of Memory Modification Interfaces (MMI). It's not a perfect technology; not by a longshot.
"But sir, 19 of the 20 test subjects experienced severe depression and fell into a coma."
"And the 20th? What was his reaction to the input?"
"Extreme rage, violence, and rampant paranoia, sir."
"Very good. You've done well, Dr Ubuntu. I'm authorizing Stage Six. Call our contact and inform him that we have more product available for distribution."
True, but again, you seem to be wanting a Shadowrun setting close to Shirow-punk (and no, I didn't invent the term....) than what you have. Cool with that and all that, but really, you've moved outside the parameters of the game at this point.
With all the work you seem to be putting into this, and just how seperated it is from existing Shadowrun, i almost have to wonder why you aren't out there designing a whole new game?
As for Pavlovian Conditioning being 'too advanced'...
Pavlov did his stuff over a hundred years ago real time, as... never mind compared to the setting. All I suggest is that if you can access the brain like that (what you want) convincing the brain to access your downloaded memory rather than visual cortex given a fixed stimulous (photo in hand...) would be childsplay compared to actually downloading the memory itself.
With all the work you seem to be putting into this, and just how seperated it is from existing Shadowrun, i almost have to wonder why you aren't out there designing a whole new game?
As for Pavlovian Conditioning being 'too advanced'...
Pavlov did his stuff over a hundred years ago real time, as... never mind compared to the setting. All I suggest is that if you can access the brain like that (what you want) convincing the brain to access your downloaded memory rather than visual cortex given a fixed stimulous (photo in hand...) would be childsplay compared to actually downloading the memory itself.
| QUOTE |
| True, but again, you seem to be wanting a Shadowrun setting close to Shirow-punk (and no, I didn't invent the term....) than what you have. Cool with that and all that, but really, you've moved outside the parameters of the game at this point. |
Hmm... maybe.
I'll defiitely have to read those books now.
| QUOTE |
| With all the work you seem to be putting into this, and just how seperated it is from existing Shadowrun, i almost have to wonder why you aren't out there designing a whole new game? |
It's basically becoming one.
Although this whole interface discussion is the tiniest part. I'm talking about one or two items on the equipment list that are fleshed out with a little more fluff and you are suggesting how the implementation of just these few ideas would dramatically and irreversably alter the entire campaign theme and concept...
...which is cool.
And entirely the point of discussions like these. To see what impacts these changes should/could have.But I was trying to be helpful when this started. I really was. Garrowolf wanted to explore interfaces in more detail and alter the rather simplistic way interfaces are portrayed in Shadowrun. So I presented some alternate ideas, we got into a bunch of confusion with terms, I tried to provide background information to help clarify how and why I made the decisions I did when I designed how the interface should work and walla... here we are and I apparently have to make a whole new game now.
On interfaces... geeesh. Imagine if you saw my character generation rules...
I may be imagining things, but aren't you already involved in a project to recreate the matrix rules so they 'make sense'?
I mean, if it was just this one thing, you still need hard and fast rules to hack a person via Simsense... preferrably ones that aren't going to make all your players make characters who never, never ever, and I do mean NEVER, jack in.
then the Mage types are going to ask when THEY get the power to rewrite people...
So, this one 'tiny thing' with big implications is actually a huge thing. It just looks small...
I mean, if it was just this one thing, you still need hard and fast rules to hack a person via Simsense... preferrably ones that aren't going to make all your players make characters who never, never ever, and I do mean NEVER, jack in.
then the Mage types are going to ask when THEY get the power to rewrite people...
So, this one 'tiny thing' with big implications is actually a huge thing. It just looks small...
| QUOTE (Spike @ Feb 12 2007, 06:03 PM) |
| I may be imagining things, but aren't you already involved in a project to recreate the matrix rules so they 'make sense'? I mean, if it was just this one thing, you still need hard and fast rules to hack a person via Simsense... preferrably ones that aren't going to make all your players make characters who never, never ever, and I do mean NEVER, jack in. then the Mage types are going to ask when THEY get the power to rewrite people... So, this one 'tiny thing' with big implications is actually a huge thing. It just looks small... |
I don't need hard and fast rules to hack a person through simsense. At least not anymore than the rules (or my house rules) currently allow. As Garrowolf keeps pointing out, simsense is just an interface.
And I don't see any reason to give them anymore psychotropic brainwashing or BTL-creating abilities than currently exists in Shadowrun.
They, might, however get a few more interesting items added to their equipment list... Psychotropic Conditioning, anyone?
P.S. I didn't write my Matrix rules just to have them 'make sense'. While sensible rules would, of course, be preferrable, the decision to create my custom hacking rules had very different design philosophies behind it.
Ah, but the stuff you are talking about as pure fluff is going to get used, and in ugly inhuman ways. If we suggest BTL can make alterations to actual personality beyond addictions and conventional insanity, then someone is going to start working on ways to do that all the time in their own ways.
If a skill chip downloads the memory into your brain, that completely removes the need for actual training and schools. Hook 'em up to simsense and feed all the skills they'll ever need right into their brains. Bam! instant experts on any subject. And since they are now stored in the greymatter instead of on a hardwired chipset, they can now learn and improve, else your logical chain of events starts to break down. Even if they don't, who would prefer to wait twenty years to train up a real expert, when you can send out a thousand 'pretty good' guys right now? And a thousand more tomorrow at that?
If we can program the brain directly, and quickly under well controlled circumstances, then the fact remains that people can, and will be programmed to do things... hacked in other words.
Right now you want fluffy changes to BTL without the corresponding societial changes why?
If a skill chip downloads the memory into your brain, that completely removes the need for actual training and schools. Hook 'em up to simsense and feed all the skills they'll ever need right into their brains. Bam! instant experts on any subject. And since they are now stored in the greymatter instead of on a hardwired chipset, they can now learn and improve, else your logical chain of events starts to break down. Even if they don't, who would prefer to wait twenty years to train up a real expert, when you can send out a thousand 'pretty good' guys right now? And a thousand more tomorrow at that?
If we can program the brain directly, and quickly under well controlled circumstances, then the fact remains that people can, and will be programmed to do things... hacked in other words.
Right now you want fluffy changes to BTL without the corresponding societial changes why?
| QUOTE |
| Right now you want fluffy changes to BTL without the corresponding societial changes why? |
Hey, no. I didn't say that. The corresponding societal changes were the point. What I said is that players wouldn't necessarily be able to create BTL or hack brains directly, which is what you were asking about. Let's look at these societal changes:
| QUOTE |
| Ah, but the stuff you are talking about as pure fluff is going to get used, and in ugly inhuman ways. If we suggest BTL can make alterations to actual personality beyond addictions and conventional insanity, then someone is going to start working on ways to do that all the time in their own ways. |
Exactly!!!
Yes. The fact that these sick illegal experiments are going on is an awesome societal piece of fluff and possibly a source of many Shadow activities. Anything that makes the corps evil through self-interest is a GOOD thing for the setting.
btw, what you are describing isn't very unsimiliar to personafixes from the book and those had far less societal consequences than should be expected.
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| If a skill chip downloads the memory into your brain, that completely removes the need for actual training and schools. |
Yes. A good reason for corps to be conducting illegal experiments to develop the technology, no?
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| Hook 'em up to simsense and feed all the skills they'll ever need right into their brains. Bam! instant experts on any subject. |
BTL, not simsense. I'm trying to seperate the two into different interface types. You can't do this kind of stuff with simsense. Not well... anyway... certainly much not better than with AR or datajacks.
But, essentially, yes. This is the holy grail of BTL research. Unfortunately, as it is now, most of these users will develop extreme personality defects, burn out after awhile, have glitches in their programming, or have some of their other knowledge erased. Possibly other stuff. Psychotropy is dangerous, whatever its medium. But the ultimate and most common side effect will, of course, by BTL addiction. I picture even essence lost could be a factor of long term use (or extremely dangerous short time use).
But yeah... picture it... a conditioning treatment that will essentially give you any skill you want for 10,000 or less. Each time you take the treatment, there's a good chance you end up with a BTL addiction or some other twisted mental drawback. Each time you get the treatment, the addiction worsens to the next grade. Do you want this treatment? It has its perks. I imagine some people will want it. I imagine every corp will want to put it in their employees if they could get away with it without anyone knowing (and the employees were easily replaceable).
| QUOTE |
| And since they are now stored in the greymatter instead of on a hardwired chipset, they can now learn and improve, else your logical chain of events starts to break down. Even if they don't, who would prefer to wait twenty years to train up a real expert, when you can send out a thousand 'pretty good' guys right now? And a thousand more tomorrow at that? |
Exactly. Sure.
But now consider that the use of this technology is almost always fatal, although you might get a few useful years out of the person. Also, consider it is highly illegal. It's the equivilent of randomly zapping your employees with Black IC for fun and profit. Definite social reprecussions. Not absolute reprecussions... there's no EVERYONE will do this or EVERYONE will do that. Rather there's everyone wants to do this, but doesn't want their rivals to and everyone tries to do this but doesn't get it quite right... etc. etc. It's high-tech self-interested conflict. It's shadowrun.
| QUOTE |
| If we can program the brain directly, and quickly under well controlled circumstances, then the fact remains that people can, and will be programmed to do things... hacked in other words. |
Exactly. Sure. That's sort of the point of the interface.
But the Memory Modification Interface is still in its infancy. Simsense has been perfected but technological development has been stunted with BTLs and not allowed to proliferate, due to legal, social, and shadowy reasons. As is, MMI is just what it says it is - memory modification - but it has the potential to be so much more. It's on the cutting edge of Shadowrun tech. It's just not quite here yet.
Okay I think that the problem is still in definitions. I don't have a problem with changing the tech but we need to be on the same page about some of this.
It seems like you are thinking of BTL differently then the game. Basically all BTL is is like having your radio too loud. It is playing simsense which is all the senses and emotions as file types too high. You are getting input at too high a level, way beyond the levels that the human body normally feels. This makes it feel Better Then Life because it is play back at higher then normal levels.
It requires a simsense playback system that is deigned to or altered to allow playback at higher then normal levels. It is very similar to Strange Days.
At no point does it hack your brain or edit you in anyway. It may feel good and be addictive but it isn't altering you that way.
Bad BTL at worst would be like using IC on yourself.
Now I'm not saying that it wouldn't be cool to start introducing ghost hacking as a mechanical way to access and recieve memories. You could alter them in various ways.
I had a character that was working on that called a Mentat. He was hired by a megacorp to alter a scientist after an extraction. Then another team was ready to reinsert him. I kept it corp tech that they had access to.
It is sort of like what Orson Scott Card said about hyperspace. You don't have to come up with a new term for your stories becuase if we ever access it that is what it will be called. It has entered into our language that way. There is a sort of linguistic inertia. When ever we get the tech it will probably be called BTL and Ghost Hacking because that is the early name for it.
It seems like you are thinking of BTL differently then the game. Basically all BTL is is like having your radio too loud. It is playing simsense which is all the senses and emotions as file types too high. You are getting input at too high a level, way beyond the levels that the human body normally feels. This makes it feel Better Then Life because it is play back at higher then normal levels.
It requires a simsense playback system that is deigned to or altered to allow playback at higher then normal levels. It is very similar to Strange Days.
At no point does it hack your brain or edit you in anyway. It may feel good and be addictive but it isn't altering you that way.
Bad BTL at worst would be like using IC on yourself.
Now I'm not saying that it wouldn't be cool to start introducing ghost hacking as a mechanical way to access and recieve memories. You could alter them in various ways.
I had a character that was working on that called a Mentat. He was hired by a megacorp to alter a scientist after an extraction. Then another team was ready to reinsert him. I kept it corp tech that they had access to.
It is sort of like what Orson Scott Card said about hyperspace. You don't have to come up with a new term for your stories becuase if we ever access it that is what it will be called. It has entered into our language that way. There is a sort of linguistic inertia. When ever we get the tech it will probably be called BTL and Ghost Hacking because that is the early name for it.
Garro:
If I understood him correctly he does realize what the game means and what he means are two seperate things. He just wants to have them mean what he means instead.
Which puts us in the odd-ish position of either having to let it drop because one side or the other must hold an untenable position (arguing canon with someone who has chosen deliberately to reject it, or arguing new ideas with someone tryign to explain old one), or essentially asking him to preach to us his vision.
Which is why I told him to make it a whole new game. Hell, I'd buy it just to check it out even if I didn't talk to him first here.
If I understood him correctly he does realize what the game means and what he means are two seperate things. He just wants to have them mean what he means instead.
Which puts us in the odd-ish position of either having to let it drop because one side or the other must hold an untenable position (arguing canon with someone who has chosen deliberately to reject it, or arguing new ideas with someone tryign to explain old one), or essentially asking him to preach to us his vision.
Which is why I told him to make it a whole new game. Hell, I'd buy it just to check it out even if I didn't talk to him first here.
Well I like some of his ideas but I keep on getting lost in the differences in definitions. I would like for his contribution to go farther and maybe help out more people. In order to do that we need to get on the same page. I don't want him to isolate himself with it.
I realized that what I was talking about actually IS in the game already, I just missed it because it was in the equipment section and not in the Wireless section. They call it Augmented Reality Environments. I am just going to call it Overlays because I think that name flows better. I'll specify in the future that is what I am talking about though.
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