And that I wouldn't dispute.

Still, now that nanotech is used widely for cyberware and is described even as essential, when the technology vanishes overnight, the description of the impact (so far) is too flippant for my taste. It assumes that all you need to do is go back to the old method and under some altered pricing structure everything works as before. But unless the old technology has been developed in parallel the necessity to redesign and really reinvent back to the state of nanite assisted cybertechnology is a real crisis (and that's assuming that the non-nanotech solution is capable of the same kind of performance). You can no longer rely on nanotech retooling, standard procedures of cybersurgery don't work. You have an augmented population that needs maintenance among them probably a whole bunch of augmented cybersurgeons. Certainly the costs for higher cyberware quality grades should go up. And on top of all that some idiot in marketing tasks you with implementing cloud computing features because that supposedly boosts sales.

I don't know if nanotech needed to be reined in. Rebalancing is one thing, taking certain applications off the table is another, but scrapping the whole field? I mean I'm sure nanotech will be back. If not already in the next *ware book then down the line. But maybe nanite use for cybertech should have been exempted from this problem. After all it's primarily the new nanotech that came from Deus. Turns out you shouldn't use design patterns coming from a cruel machine god, surprise! Would have worked better with the fluff.

Personally, I would have preferred another version of handwavium where nanostuff became so easy to counter or otherwise mess with that it wasn't going to be useful outside extremely controlled conditions. It wasn't suddenly less reliable as process, just not something you'd want to use out in public because THEN it was too easy to negate.

This way your cyberdoc can still use nanotech to patch you up or slap new things in, but you don't run into it outside anymore.

OK, let us have a look at the statement from M&M you so desperately cling to:
Nanotechnology is an absolute necessity for all cybernetic surgery, especially for the installation of bone lacing, balance augmentors, retinal duplication, orthoskin and dermal sheathing. Nanotech connects all cyberware to the neural pathways that go to the brain. In addition, nanites are directly integrated into many cyberware devices, including cybereye accessories, filtration systems and chemical immunity and chemical analysis tools.
Piece by piece:

• Bone Lacing: 1st edition
• Balance Augmentor: Actually new in M&M
• Retinal Duplication: 1st Edition
• Orthoskin: Shadowtech
• Dermal Sheath: CT
• Neural Interconnects: 1st Edition
• Cybereye Accessoires: 1st Edition
• Filtration Systems & Analyzers: ST

So out of all the items for which nanobots (seemingly considered synonymous with nanotech in general by the author) are described as even more essential than usual, only ONE is actually new since the invention of these magical buggers...
Bottom line is what I already said: Even for (then as now) hyper-advanced stuff like Cybermancy and MBW, fluff does implicate nanobots as necessary. We might lose the Balance Augmenter though, OH NOES!
(Edit: Balance Augmenter is in SR5, take the noose off)


@Fatum (and TJ):

The difference is that sensor RFIDs are not tiny robots which violate logic by their very existence and are able to manufacture microelectronics outside cleanrooms on top of that.

Desperate? Let's slow down here.

I think, we are arguing different things. I'm not actually discussing the discrepancies between Shadowtech and Man & Machine. But I guess I should. Nanotech was retconned to be more important in the field of cybertechnology than was described before Man & Machine. While Man & Machine seems to point at Shadowtech especially with the comment about misnamed nanites, I believe they mean an earlier era (and I wasn't clear enough about this before). For example they also say "True nanites are more precise and versatile, allowing larger devices, including limbs, to be implanted without such a loss of Essence that the body would shut down." There are cyberlimbs already in first edition, so nanotech must have been in use back then too. So the Shadowtech information has been retconned, at best can be explained as outdated. How does that work with Leonora Bartoli? I have no idea.

You seem to dislike this change and probably didn't arrive at the same conclusion that nanotech applications in cybertechnology predate Shadowtech. Well, I take the retcon at face value, especially as a slighty modified description made it into Augmentation and affirmed the new version. So cybersurgery for two decades or more uses nanotechnology. That's the starting point for my argument.

Now a different question is whether the situation is really so bad if you go back to the old method. I don't think the description of the (supposed) science behind nano- and cybertechnology enables us to make that call. So indeed I'm taking my judgement from "would not exist without", "staple of surgical installation and implantation procedures", "absolute necessity" in Man & Machine and Augmentation in a totally undesperate way I hope.

So, maybe I'm not giving Catalyst enough credit and this is basically a ret-retcon.

Sengir, do you know what the words "absolute necessity" mean?

Also, you and me can produce microelectronics outside of clean rooms, without even being able to manipulate molecules directly as the nanobots do (ymmv as to how "micro" those resulting "microelectronics" are, though).

If the magical hard nanites get reigned in I'm all for this. Actually nanotechnology getting nuked wouldn't make any sense; that would be equivalent to saying "The chemistry skill got infected with a virus."

SHUT.DOWN.EVERYTHING.


/apologizes

Nano-produced AKs melted, remember?

But that's what they did. They dropped a bridge on Nanotech.

If you think of materials science, I don't believe that is meant by nanotechnology, just submicroscopic machinery or its bioengineered equivalents, so hard and soft nanites.

Yeah, I didn't really get that point. But I still disagree with it, because the reference to the "old nanites" is just too parallel to the text in ST to make me believe in a coincidence.

The emphasis placed on how new and revolutionary theses nanites are also makes it seem unlikely that they have been around since forever. If nanotechnology "entered a period of exponential growth" after Deus, before Deus the tech level obviously was exponentially lower



Do you know what the words "not as necessary as claimed at all" mean?

And the kind of circuit we are talking about here (camera, microphone, transmitter, thin enough to be nearly fully transparent) is certainly not something you'd etch with OHP film at home...


RE the discussion on terminology: When Drexler invaded Shadowrun, the distinction between "nanotechnology" and fictional "nanobots" got the same treatment as all other science. And judging by the Jackpoint post, that did not change

Nanobots simply needed to go. They're the Star Trek transporter of the game -- they seem cool up until you consider the actual uses you can put them toward.

Wow, I go away for three days with no internet and come back to a topsy turvy world.

Guess I am not too surprised by this, the potential for nanotech was simply huge and largely untapped. Cyberpunk 202X had some fun concepts for this.

Still it looks like they might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but we will see how the revised versions come along.

Well, the whole chapter starts out with "Nanotechnology has been around in various guises since the inception of the cyberterminal and the end of the Euro-Wars." (p. 80) And it seems that augmentation / medicine was the one field were nanotech had been widely used: "the main focus of nanotechnology before Deus was in the medical field." (p. 84) Once more, I also think that the description of the old method matches Shadowtech and would thus tie that method to the early 2050s. Except you have all the emphasis on the importance of "true nanites" for cyberware in Man & Machine. I mentioned the part about cyberlimbs and to give another example of something that indicates the change to me: "This old-world nanite was responsible for the first implants" (p. 84) doesn't seem to fit the early 2050s where a lot of standardised implants were already available. All this makes me think they retconned it and just wanted to also integrate the old explanation. So in that sense Shadowtech even confirms you need nanotechnology for wiring cybernetic interface and nervous system.

But there is certainly enough room for speculation.

Or the nanobots could stay and their abilities could be restricted instead.

Want to hear about a character who got seriously hosed in 5th?

Stay-at-home asthmatic hacker with copious amount of neural nanoware.

Primary mode of hacking? Non-viable.
Tens of thousands invested in cutting edge link? Wasted.
Changing to new on-site decking? Asthma.
Nanotech? Probably either dead or brain-damaged.

Yay, new edition!

... Dead or brain-damaged would be a GIFT. There's a reason why one of the going theories entails Inhabitation Sprites.

-- I'm going to chalk that up to a misunderstanding of what nanotech is. Or they melted from some other mechanism.

We desperately needed that as an archetype?


I'm going to chalk that up to CGL.

I brought up the false Front system for a reason. It went with the nanoware retinal, fingerprint and voice print duplication on a technomance build I played for a few years. Which is why I said the Smart Staff was broken when you see a pencil box convert to a staff/sword in less than a second but the other stuff takes minutes (even the jigsaw skull) it makes you question the though put into any book...


Best character I ever had by the way... Sided with the Neo-A's when they set off the DOOM chemical in NY... Killed 60,000 people and got away with it... Man that pissed off the rest of the players. (Only that they lost not at me, they thought it fit well with the character since he was written up as a middle eastern terrorist.)

>War!

>makes you question the though put into the book...

Come on now, we've discussed this enough times.

Didn't Augmentation also take the non-Runner fields of nanotechnology further? I seem to remember snippets about S-K growing their new Seattle HQ out of wood-producing nanites and mention of cities built of living coral that used nanites in their construction and maintenance. It wasn't my cup of tea for a dystopic society but it did advance the setting into a cool, post-needs direction that made sense.

I thought medkits also used nanotech.

Man & Machine was already mentioning corporate investment in nanotechnology beyond body augmentations, in industry and aerospace.

Actually, if it was to make sense, the neutralization of nanotechnology should also result in the cancellation of the space elevator project. In this regard, that would be another nail in the coffin of SR technological evolution (and now I said it aloud...).

I do not think it would stop it entirely, but it would certainly slow it down as it would have to proceed differently using more manageable tech. Or at least we hope not.

On the stuff that is supposed to just be nanite-MADE, and afterwards have no actual active nanites in their structure, but still somehow got affected by this Sybil thing...

We know that they are SUPPOSED to not have active nanites, but who is to say they don't have them anyway? Snuck into the manufacturing process by whatever is hijacking all the nanotech?




-k

Nanites degrade quickly when exposed to the elements. Even if you pack a rifle full of active nanites, in a couple of years it will be inert unless there's also a nanohive to replenish the numbers.

My understanding is that it's not that they "melted" all of a sudden. It's that they weren't properly "welded" at a micro level. Any stress can cause the micro-welds holding the material together to come loose, causing the item to appear to "melt" or disintegrate.

There's a couple schools of thought on Nanites. One is more realistic, one is much more sci-fi, the "gray goo" nanites. I don;t really know a lot about either of then myself (And thus avoid them for the most part), as it's outside my area of interest.

Problem is that SR4 very much was using the Gray Goo version for a lot of things. microscopic Machines that can build stuff out of, umm, stuff. It was science-magic, and while that's fine if you're doing a high sci-fi game, Shadowruns not that. And Nanites as they were presented effectively change the entire Shadowrun world, and make it, well, not Shadowrun anymore.

Would you describe that as "melted to slag", though?

Come on, machines making stuff out of stuff are a no-no, but magic making stuff out of nothing is fine?

Of course! Don't you know anything about science?!?
[/linkara]

Oh please. If "a wizard did it" was a catch-all excuse then you should have no problems with anything in Shadowrun.

Magic takes effort and magic is very rare. And Magic doesn;t just "create stuff out of nothing". there's no summon food and water spells. No "Create wall". mages are not and cannot replace manufacturing.

But super-nanites can, as used in some sci-fi. And that eliminates most of the dystopia from Shadowrun, and that's a problem. Shadowrun has a set genre and theme that most players and casual fans are familiar and comfortable with. It's what they expect when they sit down to play the game. And frankly Shadowrun Returns is just reinforcing this.

Food stops being a problem. manufacturing stops being a problem. hell, with nanoforges and 3D printing, manufacturing and commerce stops being a problem. Money is devalued, the corps lose their grip on things. And suddenly, we're playing a completely different game.

I think the problem is you unnecessarily subscribe to the kind of wide-eyed utopianism that promised the same ideal future with the rise of atomic energy or before that the steam engine. Either we have nanotech and hence utopia or we don't have it and can remain in our cyberpunkish mire. You want Shadowrun to stay Cyberpunk? I think that is valid position. But there is a thousand ways to do that besides completely shutting down nanotechnology by which I mean tiny robots. As you point out the corporations have the most to lose in this vision of the future. Well, they are in a good position to fight it and take all its benefits for themselves. After all Shadowrun is a world where a hit squad is regarded as a legitimate extension of DRM. Nano-utopians are developing a portion of the sprawl to be a post-scarcity haven? You send some goons to insert malicious nanites into their fabrication facilities. Or you fear-monger the populace about how every day more weapons are printed down in the barrens until city hall sends the police corp to shut down the 3D printers. This strange "disease" is good way to push nanotech into the framework of "everything has a price", where using this type of augmentation runs the risk of an "infection".

Marrying Cyberpunk to nanotechnology, even the science magic kind, is easy if you ask me. You make it into magic the corporations wield, a proof of their power, the stuff that builds their palaces in the sky and beyond. And while tiny machines clean the glittering corporate façades, way down in a dark alley some transhumanists are strangled to death beaten down by uniformed thugs.

EDIT: Adapted analogy to leave a bit of breathing space for the idealists.

Here's something you're missing. Nanotech isn't gone. It hasn't completely stopped working. It's just very dangerous and unstable right now. This let us roll it back some so that we can rework how it gets used in the future. Plus, we get a plotline or six out of it in the meantime.

Well actually, that's what I suspected:

I guess I want to say augmentation could lead to a better future, the stuff you can do with magic certainly. There is even fusion power. None of this, including nanotechnology, needs to change anything about the setting. Utopia was always about society not technology as evidenced by the 16th century origin of the term.

Other than that my only problem in the handling of this plot line is given how important nanotechnology is supposed to be for cyber- and bioware (going by the last two editions), you would think that its (temporary) removal should be more disruptive than (so far) it has turned out to be. Cyberware quality grades becoming more affordable is just one example.

But nanites cost nothing and are very common? Despite the costs and availabilities in Augmentation?
Besides, magic isn't all that rare. One in every hundred metahumans is Awakened on average, plus there are metasapients, free spirits and whatnot. I somewhat doubt one in every hundred metahumans is a skilled professional in production industry.

It just creates stuff out of mana of which there is unlimited supply, which is only going to increase for the next 2500 years.
And the spell is called Nutrition, Street Magic, p.170.

Neither can nanites, realistically. Mages can at least bind a spirit of fire and order it to turn crank.

And the nanites in Shadowrun have to be those cornucopia super-nanites why, exactly? There is no reason for them to be cheap, especially minding that self-replication is not yet an option.
Hell, in sci-fi, geneengineering and ocean farming eliminate hunger and inequality once and for all, too.

Isn't there a wall [element] spell in 4th edition?

On a similar subject, what effect would the ability to summon spirits have had on the construction industry?

At least the failure of the fighter jets was explained by the nanite maintenance systems going haywire, those systems would certainly include a hive. The AKs are another story, though from the offhand reference it might also be possible that just freshly printed ones melted. If all nano-AKs melted, well, that would be a stupid end to a stupid item...

@Loki:

You realize that the widespread adaption of the steam engine spurred some _minor_ socioeconomic upheaval? And that is exactly what nanites as presented in 4th Ed should by all rights do, only in reverse direction: Nanites are presented as so dirt cheap and flexible that this would be an industrial revolution which puts the means of production into everybody's hands -- and contrary to certain other experiments at that, it would work, because nanites are the super magic cure-all.

Cyberpunk has always been about the effects of technology on humans. But the treatment nanites got was like compact, safe nuclear reactors were invented in the 19th century, made affordable to everyone, and NOTHING happened.

So the TL;DR is: "We didn't like nanites, so they had to go"?

Yes. Minor is underselling it, but I assume you quip. Note though my point was that it didn't bring about a utopian society, not that it didn't have any effects.

I would have to really dig into Augmentation to discuss this. But let's just say your characterisation is correct. Fourth Edition in the beginning attempted to take Shadowrun more into the direction of transhumanism. Making this new technology powerful was probably deliberate so it could drive the setting towards a post-cyberpunk future. Of course these plans were abandoned, maybe when Rob Boyle left or Peter Taylor. I don't know the details. A lot was set up besides nanites for that transformation: Evo's new corporate identity, the Transhuman League, new AIs etc. Remember we lost a space elevator sourcebook somewhere along the way. I believe had the setting followed this path, we would have seen the socio-economic changes nanotechnology brings about. Instead Catalyst toyed with nanotech on the gear level but didn't further explore its effects on society and at the latest with Fifth Edition will bury the post-cyberpunk project for good.

Well, they are not steampunk-cyberware which is the preferred way in SR5.

SYL

Like Deus becoming a hive intelligence in a body of nothing but nanomachines, ala SID 6.7 .Yes, but it's not a permanent spell. As soon as the magician stops focusing on their [Sand] wall, it disappears without a trace.

The basics were already introduced when M&M went all Drexlerian "fuck logic" nanobots, anything else is more or less the logical consequence of the nano-magic. If a settings includes something which violates every single bit of physics and chemistry on the books, "well, uhm, god nanites did it " actually becomes totally fine explanation for everything, and so it happened...


BTW, I consider AIs and all that to be more "para-humanism": Humanity is still around with the same problems as usual, it's just that now other "species" have the same trouble. Or worse

So if two AI's fall in love and get married, moving into the same home node but later have a falling out and part ways, can one sack the other for half the node and resources?

I'm no Luddite, but it's an absolute truth that machines can and have put people out of work before, and that doesn't necessarily lead to utopia given that many people are demonstrably more opposed to "freeriders" than they are to letting people freakin' starve. So things would still be a problem because people can and do manipulate who gets what in order to maintain their relative social dominance rather than manage supply based solely on practical, humane reasons. That's a big deal since the corps still had the upper hand when it comes to controlling the means of production. I mean, FFS, the reason we're actually facing economic crises in many parts of the world right now actually has more to do with market manipulation and low aggregate demand than it does with issues of supply--we could easily ramp up the production of flatscreens and donuts, but people aren't buying them right now, so we don't, because it's a bad business move. Beyond that, Shadowrun demographics haven't really ever made sense and so the notion that food supply of all things is a problem is frankly pretty farcical from the git-go. So while it's no skin off my nose where this goes, I have to say that the whole shebang over nanites hits me as an overreaction.

The problem with self-replicating nanobots is that they can

1) build anything they have the raw materials for, and

2) build themselves.

In effect, you can get them to do anything. Want a building there? Release a nanobot. It'll self-replicate and be done in a couple days. Want to convert this block of apartments into a music hall? Release a nanobot. It'll self-replicate and be done in a couple days.

Plant a grain field? Nanobots. Harvest the grain field? Nanobots. Genetically engineer the grain to withstand the elements and disease? Nanobots.

Fix your broken leg? Nanobots. Cook you a nice steak dinner? Nanobots. Convert waste matter into a usable fuel source? Nanobots.

Why not? They build themselves, so once you have a few, the rest are free.

Kids want a treehouse? Nanobots. Car won't start? Nanobots. Chipped a tooth? Nanobots.

Want to obliterate an infantry battalion? Nanobots (provided they don't have their own for protection).

Need a babysitter and the regular is sick?

Nannybots


wait.....

Convert a nearby country (and all its people and things) into a sweet suburb for your country? Nanobots.

Destroy a dead world and reconvert it into a lush paradise as well as revive your dead best friend who fast grows from infant to adult in record time?

Genes-... err.. Nanobots.

That's a bit ironic though as the setting we are speaking of includes magic. But sure, nanites in their popular conception are not scientifically sound. I actually don't remember that much about nanotechnology in Shadowrun, I just reread the cyberware portion for this discussion. The rest I read quite a while back. But I believe Fatum has a point in both that self-replication is yet not achieved and that most of the nanotech stuff is still quite expensive. So, it's not as if Shadowrun has gone all the way, right?

And just to make this clear, I'm actually not a particular fan of nanotech -- I liked the whole nanohive concept as a gimmick but that's about it -- my problem is with ripping something out of the setting after it has, rightly or wrongly, been given a central role. I would prefer shifting its role to adapt it to the needs of the setting. That doesn't mean, you can't have your Sybil crisis. But the way it is portrayed with all nanotechnological applications being too unreliable for cyber- and biotech for a significant amount of time, the consequences should be more drastic. (I have given my reasoning.) And I even recognize that this would be completely impractical from the point of view of the game. That is why I don't like how it is handled.

AI marriage? Somebody should make a law against that!

Well, they are not self-replicating: "[..] self-replicating nanites are still the realm of fiction." (aug.105)


EDIT: I forgot this. Something Rob Boyle said on the Eclipse Phase forums (Link):
I know, that doesn't jibe with what I said before...

I do find the design idea that nanites make SR less cyberpunk because they can lead to post-scarcity pretty funny given that magic can achieve the same thing. Nanite access allows the creator to model society the way they want (whether it is free and open like Star Trek or company shops like SR's Megacorps). Magic creates autocratic fiefdoms where the mages can rule in whatever manner they want. Thus it becomes a fight between the mages and those who utilize nanites to see who's version of society comes about.

Man versus Magic indeed.