"the name electric sheep comes from the Philip K. Dick novel... it realizes the collected dream of sleeping computers all over the internal internet. the project is an internal attention internal vortex. it illustrates the internal process of which the longer and closer one studies something, the more detail and structure appears..."
The origins of the Electric Sheep Project are lost to the mists of time. The project in it's present form is one of the most popular distributed computing projects on the planet, gracing the holoprojectors of millions.
The fascinating visuals are popular among everyone, from hipsters to junkies, and are a common centerpiece in bars and other places of gathering.
As the client is free (as in air. Ok, bad example.), it is used on lots of high-end servers that don't wish to pay for expensive corporate visual packages.
The code itself is also open source, although it is extremely convuluted and difficult to understand, it seems to be maintained and improved by a group of deckers, and hosted on a variety of servers.
________________________________________________________________
Ok folks, I came up with several ideas for the "behind the scenes" on this one.
I'm a crap writer, so I'll summarize them for you:
A: Distrbuted computing is an AI, maintained/worshipped by the group that maintains it. pick your own AI, deus, maegra, the ghost of Kurt Kobain...
B: Distributed computing is used as a backdoor/decking assist program. deckers in the "circle" can use hardware running to assist themselves.
C: government mind control, blah blah blah, conspiracy, blah blah blah....
D: ALL OF THE ABOVE.
This would work on SR3 or 4. B would be more of a benny in 4. come up with your own motivations, supporting characters, etc.