With the ability to remember what was read at a rate of 9600 words a minute... a character with a high logic + Intuition could potential circumnavigate knowledge skills by reading about them... Shakespeare sure my character will finish reading his plays in a week and be able to recite everything perfectly line by line...

What I am asking is with the power to remember a chunk of info via reading, should the bonus -1 to memory thresholds be negated when I need to recall such information...

Perhaps a way to fix this is to limit would could be "remembered" to things that could be found in a text format... for example: there is no book of legal loopholes, they are just common knowledge to lawyers as they practice law so often they understand how things interact on a level that cannot be attained from just reading the text thus my character could learn laws by reading a book of laws but would require a separate test to see if he could put 1+1 together to get 2.

What is everyone else's thoughts on the combination of those two qualities...

It is not overpowered. Knowing what someone did write and using it to your advantage is different.

For example your "I read all works of Shakespeare"; yes you know the words he wrote, but since you have not invested the time to think about it, you miss the implications, the emotions, connections between characters... everything. So no free Literature (Shakespeare) for you.

Same with everything else. You can read about syntax in programming languages, but you cannot code by yourself (at least not that good). You need to understand, train. make connections. You have the knowledge but no wisdom, intelligence in it. (But i would of course give bonus dice for having encyclopedic knowledge). If you read about system-specs of security systems, you can parrot them... but how does this affect anything, what does that mean to your runner-friends?

So... the two qualities help, but they are not "ALL knowledge skills EVER in a few hours"

There's a difference between knowledge skills and professional experience. Being a layer requires quite a bit of acting, negotioation, bluffing, and having little concience. You were right on that one.

Otherwise, yes, in real life photographic memory, while not as dramatic as shown in fiction, is a HUGE asset. In the case you brought up, the GM's job is to manage the character's
"I KNOW EVERYTHING" instinct, which simply isn't true. Photographic memory isn't 100% absolute. To recite shakespeare line by line, you DO need high logic+intuiton, perhaps VERY high.
But if a players wants to play such a brainiac, why not ? I don't see how it can unbalance gameplay at all.

Most knowledge gained that way will be pure book knowledge, lacking any real-life context, thus limiting it's usefullness outside academic circles.
Plus, for such a character, it would be tempting to rely too much on the text's truthfulness and validity.
As someone with training in analyzing texts, I can assure you that ALL texts are biased, and those who rely too much on the words, and forget to think about who wrote it, when, why, and for whom, will suffer for it.
Sometimes these flaws, or peeks into the writer's world view, can be hidden quite well. In fact, I would assume that in the world of the 2070's, propaganda, hidden or obvious, has taken control of almost every aspect of life.

So what's the difference between that and someone who just has a huge collection of cheap datasofts/knowsoft?

I have Wikipedia on my PDA and it's really useful but I have to take my PDA, load the program and look for the article everytime I need information about something. But if I could use a DNI to access it, it'd pretty much be as if I had a literally encyclopedic knowledge...

Androcomputus: Mark one of these threads as dead and direct people to the other and then ask a mod if they could graciously merge them. Two identical threads on the same topic is a mess!

Thanks,

K.

Yeah, that's what it takes some people to get laid...

exactly! in a world where everything you could probably possibly need to know is on the matrix, and the matrix is with you everywhere you go all the time, and you can DNI it, what the hell use is being able to read fast and remember it? they're almost like joke qualities

"Who needs to remember stuff? I have a simrig, unlimited storage, and an expert search system."