Personal vision of AR

Greets,

I was thinking about AR and what would it be like in 2072. It is such a versatile media and perhaps in a way that cannot be looked at from a gamer perspective.

The way I see AR is that its facebook, linkedIn, twitter, youtube all rolled into one Wireless Matrix infrastructure. These are all the basic functions of the wireless matrix. You can gain files, deny files, send files. Post files in locations. You can use AROs to cheat at cards. Or even have the whole deck and chips virtual.

You don't need to talk to your johnson in a meeting, you can do it all across the dance floor through AR as if the person was next to you. Why go into a dirty backroom when you can talk with the Johnson virtually?

In many ways I see it, that in 2072 you can do everything you can currently do with technology and more, but with a single blink or thought. You want to post up pictures of jerk ex-boyfriend, you can even have an AR follow him around with the information attached.

The question of security is not listening in on the conversation it is figuring out which conversation to pick up on. A person can have three commlinks running, each of which is talking with dozens if not hundreds of other commlinks. Security in this case is not about listening in on the conversation, but finding the right conversation to listen to.

Again, I see the Matrix in a more: what could you do with it in Rl then from a gaming perspective of numbers and stats.

Thoughts on the matter?

It won't matter how secure or how pervasive such technology becomes. Criminals will always prefer to do their most sensitive discussions face to face. It just feels right and eliminates at least one source of potential evidence or blackmail material. Coded communications between established groups or cells is one thing, but that initial meet-and-greet should be handled in the flesh.

I just know that if I were going to go and try to hire some thieves to organize a bank robbery, I wouldn't do it online. And I certainly wouldn't do it over a wireless network in a busy club with hundreds of people around. And if it were taking place in the Sixth World, right after the world was proven just how shitty the Matrix was, I definitely wouldn't even consider doing it. Especially when any number of them could have scored a copy of the software needed to hack into the conversation; it's almost sad how easy it is to do it in the 2070s unless you happen to have a drek-hot hacker of your own protecting you live.

Well, there are pros and cons to meeting face to face. The matrix does allow some anonymity (if you have better hackers). If deniability is your aim, clubs are dangerous; there might be a lot of people with cybereyes taking pictures of the party and posting them on their blogs. And then there's the risk of getting close to people who might have tailored pheromones or empathy software. And runners can only assense people they manage to find the physical body of; they can't do that over the matrix. It'll keep them from trying to score DNA samples, ritual samples, your biometric data or hacking your commlink.

All in all, as a Johnson I'd make a serious analysis of what my hiring style will be; either I become very good in face-to-face meetings (lots of tools for that), or I go for superior matrix security.

As a result, a professional Johnson in his chosen environment should be able to beat the pornomancer's negotiation skills.



Hmm. I think I'm going to make a short list of different Johnsons and styles/techniques for my campaign...

Most Johnsons just need to study the Kama Sutra. This will put them on foot with a pornomancer, teach them lots of styles/techniques, and make things a little less awkward when they screw the runners.

How does this work? "AR" is, by conventional definition, an interface used to interact with data, including data on the Matrix; it's no more a service [like "facebook, linkedIn, twitter, youtube"] than today's keyboard+monitor+windowed-OS is a service. How does your vision of AR differ from this canonical vision?


Surely some people will choose to do this, for their own reasons, but when breaking the law, I think there are plenty of reasons to avoid doing so over any Matrix connection that's routed through someone else's devices.


Well, you can't have "an augmented reality," follow him around, so I assume you mean an ARO; in this case, though, how do you get the ARO to appear on anyone else's device? Imagine you had an iPhone app that tagged your ex-boyfriend, and whenever he came within range of the camera and was recognized, an AR overlay popped up; that's great, but how do you pop it up on someone else's iPhone unless they install your app?

An ARO can't follow someone, because it has no physical presence: it is just an overlay produced by a device [usually your commlink] which you can observe and control. An ARO can no more "follow someone" than a window on my computer could leave the monitor. But again, that's the canonical, everyday vision of AR; are you proposing it as something with an independent existence?

That reminds me of the opening sketch for this week's Saturday Night Live.

This is Hilarious!

And yes you could ARO your ex with ARO graffiti which might require an RFID tag to keep it on him, prefereably a stealth tag so he wouldn't notice it. Think AR style kick-me signs.

Augmented Reality isn't used enough in Shadowrun 4th Edition. A few weeks ago our GM scheduled a meet through Virtual Realtiy, using an "Alice" school girl persona with the setting being a Gingerbread house made in Candyland.

Sounds silly, but the effect worked really well. From a player's perspective, it kept the the Johnson's idenity completely anonymous. The setting was also very refreshing and new. Instead of the typical back room bar, night club, or a remote location.

In 2072, governments have virtually no power, thus Matrix security is probably a lot more laxed. Who is scanning the nodes? Who is conducting security in the wireless world? The corporations? There are to many checks and balances for one corporation to dominate the world wide matrix. With the proper Firewalls setup, and perhaps a hacker/technomacner running security for you, a meet via AR is potentially a lot safer then it would be in the flesh.

Augmented Realty is another place to expand the Cyberpunk world into other elements of Fiction and Fantasy. It's a place to let a GM or PC expand their imagaination. There is so much you can potentially do, and I don't think GMs use the Matrix enough because we dont' fully understand what it is capable of doing.

the implications of the tech are VAST. which is why Chrysalis' free-thought museings are important. It's too easy to get locked into thinking in the context of a shadowrun plot instead the wider context of the general setting. It took me along time to wrap my head around the "Emerald city" concept. I couldn't accept the idea that the metroplex government would bother to wrap the Whole Friggen City in an AR overlay. Then One day i was looking through old character designs and found a character that I'd writen almost entirely around the 'Wallspace' program. His basic downtime schtik was hanging out in pioneer park and using wall space to make all of the building's look like Gigantic penises (Peni? shrugs) . It occured to me; Why bother with city beautification progects when you can just plant virtual flowers and call it good. "Emerald City" was a damn effective way to give the whole city a facelift without a single Orange Barrel.

I love the AR programs.
Wall space, virtual pet, virtual surround sound, miracle shooter, They're all excelent ideas.

I had another character with a virtual dog named Humpy. It was Humpy's job to hump the leg of anyone who entered my AR by looking at my profile LOL The great thing was that he would keep humping them untill they threw him a virtual ball. I allmost cried when he got hit by that bus. LOL

I ran a game, briefly, where a character was a miricle shooter addict. He had a custom comlink built into a prop Ares Predator just for MS. Hilarity ensued when he rolled a glitch and holstered the fake gun on the way to a meet. It was EPOK to see him quickdraw a plastic pistol under fire. Also all the kids in his neigborhood would gang up on him. He came home to an ambush every day.

IRL i had a nokia phone that would send business cards. The problem is that no one elses phone understod what it was supposed to do with it. It would be really awesome if instead of manually seting up a new contact and voice dialing for every employee of every subcontractor and every vendor on every jobsite we could just excange e-cards. I fucking hate paper business cards I literaly have pounds of business cards. There's pretty much zero chance that I'll ever call or use the services of a person who walks on the job. I'm sure I've wasted lots of money because I don't have time to walk out to the truck and flip through cards. I pretty much only use the people who are allready in my phone. Shadowrun has largely solved this problem.

With a comlink and WMI I could, with a thought, get 3 or 4 contractors in an AR chatroom along with the architard the cadjocky and my boss-send them all a copy of the prints along with the revisions I want them to approve-get everything solved and back on track and save the conversation for the client so he can bitch about it after it's too late for him to derail the job again. This would take MINUTES instead of the days and days of phone tag that are requred now.

With a comlink and WMI I could, with a thought, know where every one of my guys are and what they're currently not working on when they should be. Who's taking 1/2 hour smoke breaks, who's sitting at McHughes instead of getting materials, and who's been padding the time card this week.

With a comlink, WMI and RFID tags I could glance at the jobsite and see every single piece of steel, where it's at and where it's supposed to be and more importantly I could see what isn't on site and what isn't were it's supposed to be.

With a comlink, WMI, RFID tags and Micro sensors, I could instantly catalogue all the tools and equepment on site, when they were not serviced last, who neglected to service them, which ones are broken that no one bothered to tell me about, which ones are about to break that no one has bothered to tell me about, who broke them, and which ones have been lost or stolen.


With a comlink my boss could check all of this stuff dayly too and there's no way I could sandbag extra time into the schedule by pulling a 'Scottie from Startrek"

Basicaly AR would turn my 50 hour week into a 30 hour week. Sweet! More time for porn!

Where do you think random paydata comes from?

There is a disadvantage of a Johnson meeting the runners only through AR. They may simply refuse to work with them. A face to face meeting shows that the subject is important and demands attention. My own runner wouldn't take a job from a Johnson who didn't meet him in person unless the Johnson was recommended by a trusted Fixer. He's see the AR Johnson as untrustworthy and insulting.

But here is why a Johnson wouldn't use the matrix to give out a job. HIS may be secure but what about the runners. If their comlinks are compromised so is the entire conversation. He also can't meet the runners and size them up to be sure they are right for the job. His comlink can still be hacked just like in a face to face meet. (though smart people bring a cheap throw away comlink to a face to face meeting). His location can still be traced.

In the real corporate world the big deals aren't closed in the board room, but in the country club, the golf course or the fancy restaurant That will never go out of style so plenty of places will have private rooms and booths for those types to meet and eat.

If the Johnson meets face to face he can set up a meet in an area he's secured personally where he knows their won't be anyone else listening in. Their is nothing suspicious about a group of people sitting down and having dinner. Get a private booth and a white nose generator and your all set. He can judge the runners make sure they are professionals and not posers. He can get a read if they are trust worthy or liable to stab him in the back.

Or your boss will make you have more things done during those 50 hours so he could fire two guys out of five, saving him money (which is the more Shadowrun-flavored option)

True, and the awesome thing about those meetings is not a word needs to be said that might be overheard. All of the real business dealings could be handled in encrypted AR signals between comlinks that are slaved in a daisy chain.

A johnson could sit right there and plan the run with the team over a cup of tea and a waldorf salad. While all the rest of the world sees a corporate business man having polite conversation about the weather with a punk elf, a grunge ork, a retarded troll and a human with wierd taste in friends

OneTrikPony. Precisely!!

As an aside: I was also thinking about face-to-face conversations and the first meet and greet between Johnson and Shadowrunner. First of all, how do you advertise jobs outside of the Matrix, playing Chinese telephone with a group of fixers? Sure if it was 1980. But this is a world of the wireless matrix. So you can post on the advert on the Shadowrun sites. This way you also don't have to worry about greasing the wheels, and certainly playing telephone is not anonymous.

Second, if Joe superhacker is eavesdropping, no secret in the world is safe. But there is that if. Joe superhacker has to know with a certainty bordering on clairvoyance that there is something important going on that will net him/her/it/them money. Easier to go an rip off credsticks and spoof SINs, aren't there?

Second, a Johnson does not grab random people to form a team, but are recommended by a fixer or by someone the Johnsons knows or they apply thanks to the power of the Matrix directly. It still comes down to rep and therefore the Shadowrunner does not only represent themselves but also their fixers. Same way the Johnson not only represent themself, but also their client's interests.

Going back to AR. I see AR as a world as much as an interface. It overlays the rest of the world with signs, billboards, emails, text and video. The books tell you that a lot of signs are not there in RL, but are there in AR, some of which are bordering on the highly important.

I would rather a Johnson comes in with AR documents than hundreds if not thousands of pages deadtree editions of files. You want to see a pic of a person. You get sent a file via AR. You want to see video, easy link to an AR. This is not 1980! Where the Johnson hands you a whole bunch of incriminating photographs and a satchel full of files. The Johnson gives you all the files virtually. And in 2072 the amount of information possible to be found about people, even SINless, is stagering to that of 1980.

You walk into an upscale shop in 2072 and it will know you to the level of what you are wearing. It will also check with the host computer at company HQ your biometrics and find out your shopping habits. The RFIDs of your clothes talk to the shop interface and an AR shop assistant will help you choose clothes even down to your preferred shopping style.

Also, if the only people you see is those who you meet face-to-face, that is so 1980.

In the real world of 2009 I work for Berlitz. I was interviewed for the job by phone and skype. I keep in contact with my family and friends through Skype. I have only seen my boss once. I have over 50-100 friends I only know through their avatars and have never met in real life. Some of whom I have known for over 10 years as well.

Shadowrun is a world. 99% of them will be talking about junk 99% of the time. You have to find that fraction of 1% to find something really valuable.

I don't think Mr Johnson's likely to bring a bag of novacoke to the meet.

Who says just because the meeting is face to face the documents are paper? Other then yourself no one is saying that. Whose saying the jobs are advertised outside the matrix no one. The Johnson goes through a fixer and the fixer contacts the runners. Just because contact is made through the matrix doesn't mean you don't have face to face meetings. And a runner or a client with serious rep or clout would likely have people keeping an eye on them.

And if you don't see them face to face, and just use AR how can you be sure your less sure about whom your talking to. Then say for a moment from the Johnsons point of view. Say the runners are killed or captured on the run. He could be meeting a hit squad for payment because he never had a clue what the runner team looked like or how they sounded. Same is true on the runners side. A shadowrunner isn't a regular job or a cog in the wheel.

First of all posting a run on some shadowrunner site is kinda stupid. Their would be no way to tell the serious offers from the jokes. And you could be sure someone would be watching looking to sell that information. Lone Star could visit the site just as easily as any shadowrunner.

Then you get to payment which is almost always in credsticks the prefered currency of the shadows. You usually would expect half payment up front and half on completion this means something has to physically change hands between runner and Johnson both before and after the job. Especially for package deliveries.

What kind of idiot is sure who they're talking to? Using AR, I can lay a digital video over myself and you'd never be the wiser. Using magic, I can do the same.

And that digital video is completely useless if the person looking at you does it with out AR. Magic is also trickier.
If you rely only on the overlay who would a Johnson know the runners he's talking to at the completion of the run are the same people he gave the job to? What if they got killed and whom ever they did the run against took the comlinks and went to meet the johnson.
Impersonating someone is very easy if they only appear in AR.

Could you please explain how that would work?

SR4A, p. 331. Overlay a virtual person over yourself.

Right, but that's not going to make you look any different to anyone else, is it? Unless they have for some reason chosen to subscribe to the service you're using, of course, but you're not disguising yourself to people who already know you're disguising yourself!

Some argument could be made that your virtual disguise could be the equivalent of spam, and be somehow forced onto the commlinks of everyone around you, but it's still only going to affect the people who are using AR and looking at you through their AR interface, right? So anyone else, just walking by your meeting without AR sees your normal face, not your virtual disguise. And that's presuming your spam succeeds in hacking their commlink, anyway. [I'll have to re-read the rules on spam, come to think of it.]

In a world where everything is connected to a Matrix a meet in the real world might give Johnsons and runners alike a way to scope each other out in more detail then any matrix search could.

A meeting in person conveys a level of respect and trust (as much as possible under the circumstances) between the parties. You also get a lot more subconscious and conscious info when meeting in person (posture, smell, manners, tone of voice, attitudes of nonspeaking members, see how they act in a public place). I guess AR and VR feeds can be edited without a problem to remove sweat, grime, or even make subjects appear totally different. In RL that takes extra effort, is easier to spot, and if one of the parties takes that extra effort it just shows more respect.

Sure lots of meets happen via AR / VR; but for the really important ones I would figure the parties would take the time to meet in person.

It's not spam when you tell the runners who are meeting you to follow the AROs you've left in the club to find you. And in Weekend Edition, it certainly implies that most people tune in to most other people's AR in the first place. It's not a rule, but it sure makes sense culturally.

I guess I'm just not understanding. The whole point of this was for the Johnson to disguise himself to the runners in a face-to-face meeting, right? Leaving aside for the moment that there might be other people the Johnson would want to disguise himself for, what's to stop the runners from just turning off the AROs when they get to the club? If you trust the runners enough not to turn off the overlay, why wouldn't you trust them enough to simply show them your face, or else have the meeting completely virtually?