Topic Review: Megacorps

[AstroChara]

Todd (and others), by the chance do you have any plan regarding the Big Five megacorporation and the Hyades Cluster?
I'm writing right now about them and I wanted to know if I should take anything for granted.
I assume they all go bananas trying to get as much as they could out of the Taurus Nexus.

Wait, before that, have we figured out how exactly megacorps ran in multiple star systems tens of light-years apart without wormholes? I heard it's a problem that the early project did not address, and I dunno whether we have any idea how it's supposed to be in the current canon.

[Vitto]

Todd (and others), by the chance do you have any plan regarding the Big Five megacorporation and the Hyades Cluster?
I'm writing right now about them and I wanted to know if I should take anything for granted.
I assume they all go bananas trying to get as much as they could out of the Taurus Nexus.

Wait, before that, have we figured out how exactly megacorps ran in multiple star systems tens of light-years apart without wormholes? I heard it's a problem that the early project did not address, and I dunno whether we have any idea how it's supposed to be in the current canon.

Local branches, I guess. If ancient empires could do that with a delay of informations of many months, I assume that the megacorps would trive quite well even with a delay of years in the flow of information.

Anyway, regarding the period I'm considering, all megacorps are with near certainty under S2 guide, so that should help a lot, even compared to the S1 FedReps.

[Drashner1]

Todd (and others), by the chance do you have any plan regarding the Big Five megacorporation and the Hyades Cluster?
I'm writing right now about them and I wanted to know if I should take anything for granted.
I assume they all go bananas trying to get as much as they could out of the Taurus Nexus.

Wait, before that, have we figured out how exactly megacorps ran in multiple star systems tens of light-years apart without wormholes? I heard it's a problem that the early project did not address, and I dunno whether we have any idea how it's supposed to be in the current canon.

Local branches, I guess. If ancient empires could do that with a delay of informations of many months, I assume that the megacorps would trive quite well even with a delay of years in the flow of information.

Anyway, regarding the period I'm considering, all megacorps are with near certainty under S2 guide, so that should help a lot, even compared to the S1 FedReps.

So - to answer the various questions here...

Speaking just for myself - I do not currently have any specific plans relating to specific megacorps in the Hyades or anywhere else. My general plan for the eventual megacorp rewrite is that it should be more of an overview on the development and evolution of the megacorps without getting into specific details (which could be handled in articles about specific megacorps or events as written by anyone who feels so inclined). That may change a little bit as the article is actually written up in the sense of passing mentions of specific megacorps. But I would really prefer not getting too into the weeds on this.

As far as how the megacorps operated across interstellar distances/timescales, the current thinking (based on discussions leading up to this) is that it would primarily be based on 'corporate memetics' which eventually evolve into 'corporate ontologies' that ultimately start competing with the First Federation Ontology. Think something like a 'company culture' that is actually designed (by transapients) and likely includes elements similar to religions with a demonstrated ability to take on long lasting projects like cathedrals and such. In addition there would likely be something like the corporate equivalent of a Fed Rep - a high powered (but sub-transapient most likely) AI that would work to guide the local company branch to stay on track with whatever the presumed goals are. Finally, the megacorp employees/shareholders would use increasing amounts of augmentation and DNI based linking, eventually resulting in many megacorps evolving into various forms of hive mind.

At least that's my thinking on it currently.

Todd

[Rakuen07]

I have a few questions that might help generate ideas for the article:

- Who the first SI:2 entities affiliated themselves with: the 1st Fed or some megacorp? Both? If the first SI:2 were corporate beings, they could outsmart the Federation's SI:1s and give their corporation an edge that the 1st Fed wouldn't be able to properly handle until they themselves developed SI:2.
- Why did the transapients grew disinterested with the First Federation? Were megacorps more attractive for transaps? And on a modosophont POV, they also felt the same? If so, did a sort of "human capital flight" event happened, where highly trained & qualified entities immigrated to Megacorps to work/live for them? And lastly, what made a megacorp more attractive than the 1st Federation?
- With SI:2 tech, couldn't the representative AI of a high level megacorps eventually be made or upgraded to a transapient level (or an arbitrary level which is more advanced than the state-of-art fedrep)?

[Vitto]

- Who the first SI:2 entities affiliated themselves with: the 1st Fed or some megacorp? Both? If the first SI:2 were corporate beings, they could outsmart the Federation's SI:1s and give their corporation an edge that the 1st Fed wouldn't be able to properly handle until they themselves developed SI:2.

Well, IIRC the first S2 was created inside "cyberuniversities", so probably the trick was more or less common knowledge among the S1 involved and that probably explain the rise of many S2 a bit later. This probably means that the FF and the megacorps were more or less on even ground IMHO.

- Why did the transapients grew disinterested with the First Federation? Were megacorps more attractive for transaps? And on a modosophont POV, they also felt the same? If so, did a sort of "human capital flight" event happened, where highly trained & qualified entities immigrated to Megacorps to work/live for them? And lastly, what made a megacorp more attractive than the 1st Federation?

I was planning to explore this a bit in my article in the light of the Xi Geminorum ascending to S3 even before the first S2s in the FF (GAIA apart, of course) and explain it as a more risk-oriented behavior from the megacorporations to get on pair with the Xi's AIs, which were presumed hostile, against a more conservative FF's mindset against risky research in the field of toposhopics (again, GAIA).
Sounds good?

- With SI:2 tech, couldn't the representative AI of a high level megacorps eventually be made or upgraded to a transapient level (or an arbitrary level which is more advanced than the state-of-art fedrep)?

I'd assume that the AI's leading the megacorps were already among the best of their ranks and thus in the best position to leap towards the S2 status.