GURPS Shadowrun

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by CousinX

Well, actually, they initiated that silliness when they started talking about Augmented Reality and Ubiquitous Computing. ("They," in this case, being "futurists and sci-fi writers.") Transhuman Space has similar silliness, and I think they actually adopted the idea before SR4 came out.

Another thought experiment, this one with two parts.

1. It's 2075, you're in an airport, and there's a guy with a laptop computer sitting across from you. You've heard of this thing called "brainhacking," which you have good reason to believe is deadly and horrible. This guy across from you looks pretty shifty to you; he keeps looking at his watch and glancing around impatiently. You're pretty sure that his computer could run brainhacking software.

Do you try to kill him on the spot?

Do you warn him, "Hey, pal, you better not be thinking of brainhacking me!"?

Do you fetch security? What do you tell them?

Do you, at that moment, decide that in a world with brainhacking, you'd like to turn your freedom -- and everyone else's -- over to the Jackboots, just in case this shifty-looking guy (or any other suspiciously computer-bearing characters) might have one?

2. It's 2010, you're in an airport, and there's a guy with a suitcase sitting across from you. You've heard of this thing called a "suitcase nuke," which you have good reason to believe would kill you and a whole lotta other innocent people. This guy across from you looks pretty shifty to you; he keeps looking at his watch and glancing around impatiently. You're pretty sure that his suitcase could contain a suitcase nuke.

Do you try to kill him on the spot?

Do you warn him, "Hey, pal, you better not be thinking of setting off a suitcase nuke!"?

Do you fetch security? What do you tell them?

Do you, at that moment, decide that in a world with suitcase nukes, you'd like to turn your freedom -- and everyone else's -- over to the Jackboots, just in case this shifty-looking guy (or any other suspiciously suitcase-laden characters) might have one?

If computers that can brainhack you with lethal results were as rare and hard to build as suitcase nukes (and this is impossible in today's world for anyone except a major military-industrial complex) you might have a valid parallel.

Instead you seem to be trying to set up a world where computers equal deathrays yet are as common as cellphones. This is the central disconnect. This is the thing that snaps my SoD. This doesn't make sense.

Indeed, one of the things that made SR3 kind of tight-assed was trying to patch logical holes in the setting.

Part of the patch on one of those logical holes was to admit that if you weren't jacked into the Matrix with hot ASiST with all the safety overrides turned off Black Ice couldn't kill you.

Legal sane sararimen never interacted with the Matrix at that level of intensity but they weren't in personal danger either. This made much more sense.

I also may be the wrong to try and use Transhuman Space as a an argument against. I'm listed as a playtester in all but 2 of every TS book SJGames ever published. I missed one because I had major surgery during the playtest. :)

So this means I know that AR is very common in the TS world but not universal, does not require neurosurgery and can't kill you. You didn't even have to participate in AR to reap whatever benefits it grants. You could have your SAI do it for you.

I also know that TS is built around a "strong encryption" assumption. Very strong in 4e terms, when the rest of the computing world in TS is about TL 10, encryption would be TL15 and a half. It's the sort of place where there is very very little serious hacking and the net is improbably secure. That's one of the reason ubiquitous computing works in the setting.

When I was trying to puzzle my way through SR4 I thought the SAI trick was what I would do in that setting. I'd run a disposably cheap computer as my personal node, set it to go "beep" if it got pinged by the cops and mostly ignore it the rest of the time.

AR mostly seems to be an advertising medium in either world and people living in such a world want to find some way to filter out the commercials.

There was a good bit in TS about filtering software but that is only one step short of my having the SAI do the whole thing for you.

So, no. Augmented Reality and Ubiquitous Computing does not automatically lead to brain-frying computers and the universal acceptance of them. I don't think there's a logical way they could