In Emergence, not the SR4 book.

The people blame almost everybody and everything. Emergence says that a lot of resentment, fear, anger, was just bottled up and when Technomancers "came out" they were natural targets. They came about after the Crash 2.0 so clearly they had something to do with it. Or with the AI that was the source of it. They're pawns! No, they're demons!

No, it doesn't say in SR4 that TMs are looked at weirdly. And it is odd that this would happen in that day and age with all the other crap flowing around. But I did like the explanation of sheer human ignorance and fear being the cause of such panic. That, and the fear-mongers who stood to profit from it.

And really, one more utterly divisive thing that can split a species in two was just more fuel for the dystopian fire of SR's world.

Plus, the fact that it was just a cover-up for AIs really put the cyberpunk cherry on top of the whole story.

OK, I'm not going to go into this back and forth thing. My only point is that no where does it say that Novatech is blamed. Unless you've got a reference which would be all find and dandy.

In the words of Mr Tarturo from Joe vs the Volcana: "Im not arguing that with you."

Besides, before Emergence, how could they blame technomnacers. No one knew about them before Emergence.

No, it takes place 6 years after the Crash. Not "years and years" which would imply decades. People are still homeless, a lot of people lost their jobs, there was anarchy, fear, and uncertainty. They've only just started to put their lives together.

They don't BLAME technomancers because for the most part they don't know about them. SR4 didn't deal with it well, perhaps they didn't know what they wanted to do with Emergence specifically. But that's not proof of anything. That's just omission.

Fear, loathing, fear, anger, fear, and bad memories make people dumb. It's not as if it happened to another generation of people, these are the same people who had to adopt the new Matrix. These are the same people who probably know someone who lost loved ones during the Crash or after it. These are every day people afraid that something bad is going to happen again.

And then a lot of innocent people die in Hong Kong. They were killed by these new Technomancers, people who apparently gained their powers after the Crash 2.0.

And yes, if Bush showed proof that Norwegians were actually responsible people would still go berserk. You're discounting a lot of human emotion here. Also, not a lot of people's lives changed directly because of those attacks. No one was suddenly a nobody with their SIN gone.

What you're implying is that people should've moved on with their lives after going through a global upheaval. Your issue here isn't with the Technomancers, it's with metahuman nature.

Iraq ... Al Qaeda .... genius ... opposed

There are those who claim that in the original concept the machines didn't use the humans as power source (which is indeed ridiculous) but instead used their connected brains as a massive organic parallel processor array - basically, the humans were running the Matrix trapping them with their own brains.

This was allegedly dropped because the makers believed a majority of the audience would'nt understand what "parallel processing" or "distributed computing" was and the "humans as batteries" approach was taken instead...

Nope that's perfectly acceptable. But just because it's a classic right up there with The Hobbit.

Figures. That's exactly what some of us came up with when we left the cinema. We said that this would have been an obvious idea to use. Hollywood's desperate attempts to catch both ends of the bell curve as usual.

I think people are going to have to stop wailing on Buster for his point about lack of background. It is the case that without having played through third edition, Emergence makes less sense, and that there isn't really anything in SR4 that prepared groups for a sudden change in the acceptability or understanding of technomancers. This can't honestly be denied. SR4 has been out for two years give or take a month. It's going to be hard for anyone who's been playing for a while to suddenly say "Oh by the way, Technomancers are hated and villified and mysterious, I forgot. Jim [TM player], your elf girlfriend dumps you."

That's why I proposed revealing an AI origin as a more believable way to bring about the events in Emergence for those that want to use it. No ret-conning needed.

Though actually, I'm safe from all of this as I've banned TM's in my game. They made hackers feel stupid.

Do you read what other people write? I said I wasn't even trying hard and that I was singling out Muslims to keep it simple... I even mention how easy it would have been to drag out the figures for bigotry and hatemongering against Hispanics and Blacks (I could just as easily have added Asians and homosexuals).

You made a broad statement and your own post shows it's so much bull.
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How can you possibly defend that the age of bigotry is long gone and then cite documents that claim hate crimes against minorities (those that are even reported) are increasing at a stupendous rate?

Bigotry is alive and well, humanity certainly has not moved on, and after 9/11 people are still shouting slogans of hatred and fear (as well as throwing pipe bombs and setting fire to houses of god).

Possibly because there are significant differences between the situations, just in case you missed the obvious:

Arguably the single most devastating act of deliberate violence perpetrated by a Muslim fundamentalist groups was the ramming of two planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon resulting in the death of 3000+ innocents (one could argue the deaths of many thousands of people at the hands of the Taliban in Afganistan was worse but it wasn't as visible). For all the loss, trauma and hurt, anyone half-informed soon understood the hows and whys behind the attacks and at least how they were perpetrated - measures could be taken to try to prevent their repeat.

The Crash 2.0 and those behind it were directly responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people all over the world, the destruction or damaging the livelihoods of millions for months or years - this is devastation that hasn't been seen in the Real World since World War Two scale and in SR since the First Crash. It is spread across the globe and virtually no one is untouched. In one day more people die and are hurt as the result of the actions of Otaku than in all the years of Islamic fundamentalism put together, and to make it worse (just like the original Crash) even the best corporate computech egghead still doesn't know how Jormungand did what it did (somethings actually impossible by their standards) and how Ex Pacis otaku were able to create it - which means they could do it again and there's no means of prevent a repeat.

Now despite what the current American administration seems to think there's nothing to be gained in incarcertaing Muslims and torturing to finding out how they work so that you can avoid.

In Shadowrun there is much to be gained, in more senses than one, in incarcertaing technomancers and torturing to finding out how they work so that you can avoid. Corporations don't just want to prevent a repeat, they want to learn to control technomantic ability. Hence manipulation of the media to feed initial knee jerk hysteria and cover their ongoing pogroms.

They don't appear organized, mainly because they're insane, but who knows what just one of them can do on his own? Or who's actually pulling their strings? Maybe they are just the flesh puppets of an organized force in the Matrix - a force that last time it was unleashed killed thousands...

No, it isn't.

What is common knowledge, in the absence of fact, is what people gleem from the news. What is common knowledge is that technomancers can and do identity rape you with a thought, they can and do pry into your most secure private data at will, they can and do kill you at a whim as you ride an elevator, can and do turn your cybernetics or your car's Pilot against you, they can and do subvert computer systems and cause chaos and devastation similar to the Crash in all respects.

The point is there is no common knowledge. There is no reference. Otaku were the closest thing and to the man on the street they were never more than urban myths (and to the corps how they did what they did remains a mystery).

Technomancers are unknowns - and they are powerful and apparently schizophrenic unknowns. Who the heck knows what they can ultimately do?

Yes, magicians can do much the same, but with magicians people have had 60 years to understand that there are rules and limits to magic - and even now they are viewed with suspicion and magophobia is a recurring element in Shadowrun and magic does not (necessarily) drive its users insane.

No one knows the rules and limits of technomancy and the way the media is telling it - each one of these freaks hiding amongst you using his mind alone is just as powerful as a elite hacker, requires no technology to command technology, and is an unstable ticking time bomb capable of destroying hospitals and ravaging city grids.

And Joe Average knows Technomancers are true threats because he knows several of tehm and INN just reported that technomancers are actually wimpy rules-wise and even with Threading a single good hacker is a fair match until the technomancer calls on a powerful sprite for help...

You obviously haven't been abroad much or you haven't visited foreign boards...

Yeah, anti-americanism is pretty widespread these days. But hey, that's the least to be expected after a war of agression.

Well, both is a bit extreme since Otaku and AI have been around for a while in the perception of Shadowtalkers.

Heh, he shouldn't even have to travel, America's as bad as anywhere else - just visit some of the American right wing and neo-fascist boards I dug up when researching for Loose Alliances - the rhetoric is downright scary (and surprisingly intelligent) and active members spouting xenophobic, sexual, ereligious "hatred and fear" are in the thousands - and that's in a supposedly tolerant and PC America today.

I disagree, but your reaction is a perfect example of bigotry: you're assuming characteristics and motivations for AIs without knowing anything about them.

You're assuming A) great intelligence and B) human intelligence. Those are two significant assumptions. You did read the last chapter in Emergence, right?

And spinned a world-wide crisis to your favor? I think not.

And got chased into an alley, begged for mercy, got shot and died too?

Well, not everyone at that age lives (or rather, dies) in the US or the UK.

Oh, I know I'm far from the only minority around, and I know I've got it easy. There's plenty of people on the planet who'd be justified in replying to my list of grievances with a hearty "cry more n00b". That said, I don't feel like I'm really qualified to go touting other people's life experiences; I can only make inferences from my own. Anyway, I would like to note, however, that the late 60s is hardly so long ago; many of the people running the world right now were the young children of that era, and not all of what people learn from their parents is admirable. Besides, if it can only take a generation or two to really change people's minds on the subject, whose to say that it can't get worse in some places? Revolutions can go backwards.

You didn't do your research very well, did you?

You're probably referring to something like this article, written by a Ms. Jennifer Passmore of Florida, while she lived in Germany.

The problem is, I know Ms. Passmore personally, and I know why she wrote that article. She was doing research into white supremacy groups-- much like what you alleged to do, but clearly haven't, if you haven't gone that far. Wikipedia doesn't count.

Ms. Passmore, like a fair number of others, write the intelligent articles to get in with the groups, then get out once they've got what they need. She wasn't the only one writing to sneak in, and there's been others following her. There's a few articulate leaders, but I promise you that a lot of the "logical arguments" are written by shills. She wrote that article to attract the notice o f several of the gorups, since they were too tiny to locate on their own. A few thousand? In a country the size of the US? Big whoop, I can find more people who think the Moon Landing didn't happen.

The groups you refer to are tiny, membership in the hundreds each. Once upon a time, the KKK alone claimed over 10,000 members. There was a growing movement that argued that all blacks should be shipped back to Africa; look into the founding of Liberia for an example. I don't see any serious movement to do the same to Muslim males.

And if you want to go dick-waving: the citizen of 2070 remembers VITAS, which wiped out *billions* of humans. Even the Night of Rage was only one night, and there weren't pogroms and holocaust-like campaigns. Heck, the most racist event in recent memory, the internment of Japanese Americans during WW2, was only to detain, not to kill on sight.

The closest thing to what Emergence describes is the Holocaust during WW2, and even then, Hitler couldn't get away with simply shooting every Jew in sight. He had to detain them "for their own good". THink about that: Hitler, who had the country whipped up into an anti-semetic frenzy, could not get away with an overt genocide campaign.

I know what racism was in this country-- violence and destruction and death. I know what racism is in this country-- snide remarks and a lost promotion or two. Compared to the past, bigorty is almost gone.

Actually, most of said "anti-americanism" is in fact criticism aimed at the US government not the people.
But try to explain that to someone with a rock-solid black-and-white "with us or against us" mindset...

Why the self-censorship? If you're happy with the answers that you've been given why are you calling deny other people an interesting conversation? For better or worse, Dumpshock is a community. We're from many different walks of life, but we all have this one thing in common. There's nothing more natural than a community getting to know each other and finding out what we think about things. It's interesting and we learn from each other. What would be the point of going and starting some random thread in some political forum where I don't get to find out what Synner or Cain or you think about life in general. It will be a dull forum if there's no sense of community and you can't have that if our personalities are limited to I think it's 6 dice and you think its 7 dice.

If things aren't directly causing you a negative experience, then be tolerant. Plus "off-topic" banter weaving in and out of other subjects keeps a thread floating on the top of the page where more people will see the "on-topic" material. There have been occasions where I've only noticed a thread because of the off-topic material. Plus it keeps things interesting for those of us who've been around and already had a conversation on Samurai's vs. Mages, or the colour of Lofwyr's underpants or whatever other topic we've seen three times a month. It'll be a dull forum if all the old hands start drifting off because they keep getting told to shut up by heavy modding.

You really don't know me.

I've got a degree and a post-grad in International Relations and Political Science. I do my own research, thank you very much. I've even worked at the pan-European Institute of Strategic and International Studies (based out of Lisbon) for a spell. I worked for a short time for the Center for European Minority Studies (CEEM) and have a keen interest in cultural anthropology and religion.

I've got friends and acquaintences of pretty much every political persuasion including - I'm not particularly proud to say - Islamic activists, hardcore anarchists, ultranationalists, and even white power militants.

I pitched for Loose Alliances because I possessed an extensive bibliography and contact network of my own. My base bibliography for the 3k words on neo-fascism and ethnic supremacy movements in Loose Alliances was a page long (I'll be happy to forward it to you in a PM, I have no intention of further derailing this thread) - and those were mostly books and a handful of articles that caught my attention.

Seriously, I do my own legwork and I have enough skill and contacts of my own to get me access to otherwise closed sections of some online communities (a couple of which have since been closed by the FBI).

I really hate even posting these links, but for everyone's edification these are all Googable (if you are the sort to be shocked by xenophobic rhetoric, racial slurs, religious hate-mongering, do yourself a favor and don't click, you have been warned): Stormfront might provide a light introduction as will the American National Socialist Workers' Party (fully registered and National Alliance (all of those offer a number of links to other sites and organizations and the first two also have closed and hidden subforums casual visitors won't have access to but if you want I can also mail you some thread titles or excerpts from my backups as evidence) - though the stuff that goes up on the British Nationalist Party forums is just as eye-opening and Third Position sites tend to be well-thought out affairs.

If you've got the stomach for it go back a few years in the archives and note how the anti-black, anti-semitic rhetoric changed to anti-Islamic and has now shifted to anti-hispanic in places...

Those groups are the easy ones, I visited closed online forums and communities run by the Aryan Brotherhood, National Vanguard (now dissolved and replaced by European Americans United) and Aryan Nations (prior to the splintering). And yes, I am fully aware these are the extreme fringe and the internet is giving them a podium...

I am not acquainted with Ms. Passmore's work, I got the arguments straight from the horse's mouth, from the people posting them - intelligent, articulate and often single minded people from all over the world. Yes, there are a truckload of reactionary rednecks out there, but that's never been the whole story.

You misunderstand me. Conservative estimates put the numbers for the Aryan Brotherhood and its chapters over 50,000. In 2003 while I was gearing up for Loose Alliances, I found a Washington Post article on white power movements that claimed the National Alliance's online radio program Dissident Voices had 250,000 regular listeners in America in 2002. Even small groups like Aryan Nations are conservatively estimated to possess over 2,500 card-carrying members (in the US).

Bigotry and prejudice might not be as visible as it once was, it might not be as institutionalized as it once was but its alive and thriving.

I think you need to reread Emergence . No one in power, at any point, advocates genocide. No one in the media does either. They variously order mandatory internment, quarantines, and registration. What lynchings and violence does take place is either a direct result of the HK disaster or the public taking the things into their own hands (though this is clearly fueled by the media and intended to leave technomancers with few options than to turn themselves in to the authorities to protect their own lives).

As usual I'll agree to disagree. I have no intention of stringing this discussion out further, this thread has drifted enough. If you want to take this to PM I'm perfectly willing to do so though.

Nice to hear. That thar is my writing . I sincerely hope you go on to enjoy the rest of Emergence...

That's the best type of praise... However, what I would really appreciate is that do us all an equal turn and come back after you've read the whole thing and offering us your review.

man, that is almost offensively ignorant. like, literally: the amount of information that statement shows you to be unaware of makes my gut curdle. i didn't even know guts could do that.

that said, Cain and others have highlighted a point i agree with: no matter how much research went into the various "ism"-related material, it doesn't read as authentic. for all that reasearch, you still end up with the only real pro-Humanis voice in LA being a mealy-mouthed used car salesman who makes arguments that anybody could knock down with a feather. you still end up with a classic good guy versus bad guy story in Emergence. i mean, seriously, at least throw a twist in that shows how dangerous technomancers really can be--have Netcat totally fuck up Clockwork's life, and then put him in the hospital when he comes after her in cybercombat. stop making the racists the bad guys all the time.

I have no problem with that ^_^

I only thought that SR4 forum were limited to SR4 stuff.

Since I have purchased the book, this thread is no longuer interesting for me anyway.

I'll more than glad to write a short review.

Btw, it would be quite interesting if we knew who's who on the writers list of each sourcebook...

I mean, I know that you have done editing work along with Rob and you did some writting but we don't know what part was whom... ^_^

Soit dit en passant, j'ai lu ta biographie en Français et je me demandais comment il se fesait qu'un Britanico-Portuguais écrivait si bien dans la langue de Molière?

La biographie a été traduite de l'original en anglais par un francophone. Mon français c'est beaucoup plus limité - je comprend bien la langue, mais je manque la pratique quotidiene.

Sorry if that's as bad as I think it is, I really am rusty. I actually speak and write in 3 languages (English, Portuguese and Spanish) and I read well in another 2 (French and Italian).

I know your /writing/, and that's quite enough. Despite the letter soup you can throw, I've known just as many idiots with post-grad degrees as superintelligent garbage men. You can throw all the books you want, but that doesn't even come *close* the the expereince of marching on Washington.

Like mfb said, the writing for Emergence is sub-par for the most part. It's poorly concieved, and poorly fitted into the Shadowrun continuity. It doesn't really add much, since it's neither an adventure nor a rules book nor a sourcebook in the classic sense. I can't see it as anything but mental masturbation on someone's part, and I don't want that all over my Shadowrun campaign.

Actually, no.

I am talking about real life, not SR. As I said (see quote above), SR necessarily has to restrict AIs to stay believable. Who would want to play in a world where AIs have an intelligence of 20?

Actually, the closest thing to that in SR history would have been the NA internation camps and Yomi.

Let's just say that this is a gross understatement, it was perfectly possible for party members to get away with murder and sadly, even today, there is still is a reason for the saying that the german police is 'blind on the right eye'

Yes, but not mass murder. T4 got shut down due to public pressure. It took our current enlightened age to get Europeans to again start having physicians murder "defective" children, those who suffer "life unworthy of life", as someone once put it.

Your french is actually quite good (perhaps as good as my english, which is not my primary language)

I'm quite impressed! I always wanted to learn other languages as well... I've been studying german and japanese for some time but since I don't have any opportunity to practice, this is getting nowhere.