QUOTE (Shadow Knight @ Jul 2 2013, 03:33 AM)

I know the line editors claim. I want the in universe reason. Why do they suddenly need the matrix now when 3 years earlier they did not. How does adding a round trip to the matrix make you faster than an in body trip? traveling at the speed of light is still going to be slower than an in body trip because as fast as the speed of light is it will never be faster than the short trip in the body.
Because doing what was done in Ghost in the Shell is cool. It was not hacking eyes. Cyberware in Ghost in the Shell does not have a matrix connection. the cyberbrain does. Which is basically like a datajack and memory storage in shadowrun.
You could accomplish everything in Ghost in the shell in Shadowrun 4th near as I can tell. You hack the commlink then work your way into the PAN and if the PAN connects to a datajack you can hack the cyberware.
I believe that the answer is they they do not
suddenly need the Matrix. The canon theme is that (we have always been at war with EastAsia) the non-matrix bonus operation is how things have always operated.
As far as an in-universe explanation.
Here's the short of it: System Architecture is not a simple topic.
There are numerous, numerous, numerous areas where complexity can creep into the design and draw out seemingly "simple" processes. While it is true that the "speed" of a transmission of signals across a physical medium is very likely to exceed the "speed" of that signal through the wireless system of Matrix 3.0, that's really only one of many considerations that must be made.
Most importantly is the mechanisms that allow the Information in question to be torn down to something that may be communicated by physical properties of our universe, and then built back up into something intelligible, reliable, and trustworthy on the distant end. The mechanisms that will, among other things, differentiate between thinking "Open!" from thinking "Fish!" and creating the expected result. Or, for that matter, the algorithms necessary to distinguish background noise, from foreground signal.
(And algorithms that prevent things like the following: "Don't think "Open"... Don't think "Open"... Don't think... Doh!")
Elements that can complicate this process include, but are not limited to, things like error checking, authentication, blah, blah, etc, etc. Additionally, it is not impossible (or sometimes even unlikely) that some implementations will favor the raw processing power of distributed systems over the limited processing power of local systems.
The fundamental mistake is assuming that transmission speed of data is the total, end-all-be-all solution to this discussion.
It is not.
tldr; Retcon + Theorically Possible w/ today's existing knowledge of computing + Underlying Implementations that favor distributed Computing.
Fin.
-Wired_SR_AEGIS