My personal pet theory on why there's so much hysteria about Technomancers (now that I've had time to think about it) is that it's about the nature of technology.

We humans aren't the fastest, the strongest, or arguably the smartest on the planet (even before the metas re-arrived). But we developed technology, against the savage mysticism, with the need to survive.

We've mastered it and relied on it for thousands of years.

It is the great leveller. Anyone in the modern age can devote time and resources and learn how to fly a plane, drive a sub, write complex programs, etc. As long as you have the basic capability to do it.

Sure we have hackers and crazy people who can do great things and innovate. But technology's real gift to us is the leap in power it gives us all. It just requires access and training and everyone can manipulate the technology with skill.

We can fault some people for being more intelligent, creative, crazy as they do wondrous new things that the rest of us can't. But we're all operating in the same range.

But Technomancers are savants. They were born this way and suddenly the foundation of humanity's survival is just a plaything. Suddenly, hard-earned skill counts for less than natural, unfair, talent. No amount of hard work can offset that.

And it's all so insidious. It's technology that is being infiltrated. The even playing field just got superstars and suddenly existence has to change.

The same could be said of magic, sure. But that was always away from mainstream society. It was outside.

That's why there's so much emotion. At least to me.

I don't want to get into an endless debate on this one but...

as in, the body show no pulse or brain activity...

As for the AI's being dead, that doesn't mean us Deus-o-philes can't get our jollies. Firstly there is the remnants of that Network, as not all of may have been online. Secondly, while the AI's may be dead, fragments of their code may live on in some of the new AI's (or even Technomancers) and may in fact be the reason for some of the new AI's and Technomancers (some, not all).
Then there is the third more frightening option. In Emergence it hints that the Otaku trying to turn the Matrix into a dissonance realm may have actually succeeded. This means the Matrix itself may have been fundamentally altered in ways that no one suspects. At the heart of this fundamental change was the virus being unleashed onto three huge AI's and subsuming their code. So if that virus affected the very heart of the matrix, it more than likely took the code of the AI's with it. Basically Deus, Morgan and Mirage may now be the heart of the Matrix, a distant trinity as unable to affect the matrix as a person is unable reverse their own blood flow, yet able to affect whole portions like the moving of an arm, but which is always missed as being part of the flux of the Matrix itself.
Do AI's dream? And if an AI became the Matrix itself, how would those dreams manifest?

Or perhaps, these ancient A.I. may even dwell in the fabled Resonance Realms rumored to be in the Matrix... Or worse, in a Dissonance Realm?

thats the interesting side of the matrix in SR. it behaves much more like a alternate dimension then a collection of computers passing signals back and forth.

sometimes im left wondering if not the SR computers are analog rather then digital...

Well I have...

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... I haven't ... but I'm notorious for anticipating plot twists ... oops?

(Double oops. I'd reserved "Sedna" only for the rpg forum, but now I've slipped twice. Definitely need sleep.)

I do request that no one use Quicksilver and Imago as points for or against, however.

That mess was the Clone War of Shadowrun.

Gah.

"Hi! I'm a ten year old Immortal Elf in the body of an adult and fully developed beyond your ken. I recorded my entire life right up until I died, then somehow broke apart my cyberdeck post-mortem and hid it years before this happened, but those parts still record right up until I died. And then I'm recreated! WHee!"

No.

Just ... just no.

Don't you love it when someone tries to apply logic and objectivism to an a-logical and non-objectivist concept? Synner: so long as you keep responding with any response that tries to widen possibility rather than simply agree with the logic construct, that's how long the same tools will keep being applied.

(Mmm, Earthdawn constructs.)

Having said that, you'd think I'd know better

If we really want to keep the idea that mages are not feared but technomancers are, I think it would come down to one word: lobbyists. I just came across the mention of the Illuminates of the New Dawn last night and I think that would explain things neatly. With massive propaganda (and probably magically coercive) campaigns by mage organizations like the Illuminates, the masses would come to accept mages. But without decent lobbyists, the technomancers are left out in the cold. It's like how the Nazis exterminated more gypsies than jews, but no one cares about the gypsies because gypsy lawyers suck.

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someone hand me a 2x4...

[/ducks and spins]

You opened the door to the question, Rotbart van Dainig -- and I focus on that question over yours because it has direct relevance to the new nature of AIs. (Otherwise I'd have dropped this long ago as off-topic.)

Moon-Hawk, it would be inappropriate of me to do more than ask questions and try to refine apparent contradiction, since I've already been told I'm not "able to perceive the underlying concepts of fiction". Thus, I leave direct explanation to the expert. If you perceive this as being coy, so be it.

You'll notice that whatever else, no one else has stepped in either, either to elaborate or to find a new direction for examination. And besides, the posts are now a good deal shorter!

So it is relevant that Leto became one of them.

Children of Dune : Leto's cells are supercharged with melange, attractive to mindless sandtrout. They take on the shape of his skin. In time, they change him -- but he also changes them. At one point in God Emperor he directly states to his secret diaries that his brain was no longer where it used to be -- and thus that a pearl of his consciousness has become part of every future sandworm. From the merging of human and sandtrout, the God Emperor is born. From the shattering of that merge, the greater sandworm is born.

Leto died. Does Leto still exist?

Well, your original analysis of Leto and sandworms was:

I acknowledge that Dune involves genetic memory. I disagree that that's the point wrt Emergence ... which is, after all, what we're discussing here.

And as to the sandworms actually being Leto (albeit in different form and consciousness): that's the conclusion the Bene Gesserit sisterhood comes to.

Ah. Here's one of the Chapterhouse quotes I was looking for about the shimmering net: another aspect of universal consciousness that explicitly transcends genetics. (My own books are packed away.) The relevance of the shimmering net quotes is that even though Duncan Idaho does not have cellular samples from every incarnation, he does have the memory of each incarnation. Thus -- something more than simple genetic memory.

And what exactly are programs to an AI? if not equivalent-to-genetic coding, body-instruction, and reproduction?

... separately, because non-genetic (independent of explicit coding?):

The Bene Gesserit also have one non-genetic way of transferring memories: sharing. It was first introduced in Dune (with the wild Reverend Mother), and returned to in Heretics and Chapterhouse.

Thus, even in Bene Gesserit, memory is not exclusively genetic, but somehow transcends physical nature.

Again, we return to the question of what exactly the technomancers are. The superficial answer of

Ach, now that ye'all've been having a good time of it, you might think to read Paterson's Guide to Matrix Entities again...or possibly for the first time.