06-28-2020, 01:24 AM
Read through the Usevere Affair article this AM since regardless of what we decide to do with megacorps as a concept, it needs some love.
I suspect btw that this article actually dates from 2001, not 2010. The date is probably a typo from when we moved from the previous OA website to the current Content Management System/site. Anyway.
Some thoughts and notions - please note that I'm coming at this with the aim of making the article fit within our current take on the setting while avoiding rewriting the thing in it's entirety:
a) Move the whole Affair into virch. More specifically, have it take place inside the processing environment of a Matrioshka Hypernode (Omega Class). This gets rid of issues such as how an S4 mind could 'move back' to the NoCoZo (in the early project, we hadn't yet established that S4 and above don't really travel due to their size). If the whole thing is taking place in virtual space running on a stellar mass processor, running a purely software S4 is quite doable and 'moving' from one empire to another is as easy as changing ones email or the like.
b) Have said virtual space/hypernode be (or be part of) an Asymptote System. These date back to the earliest days of the project, but we've never really done much with them (although we should IMHO). Making this change would start to give the AS concept some love and would explain why a hypernode would have both NoCoZo and MPA virches/civs running inside it. Basically AS systems could be places where many species and civs converge (we could add this tweak to the current AS article with ease) and interact for the sake of cultural exchange or Cooperative Ventures and so on.
c) Make the Affair - and the larger 'hypereconomy' that is referenced - basically an economic virch simulation (it's been mentioned on the Discord that the NoCoZo is sort of a LARP exercise in libertarian economics and this could be in a similar - but different - vein). This lets all the economic technobabble remain basically unchanged and gets around the issue of how this sort of thing could happen in the 'real world' of the setting as we currently imagine it. The short answer is that it didn't - it's some kind of simulation being done for vaguely described/understood reasons by the archai and the participants are just going taking part in it because they want to (so economics as LARP basically).
d) Finally - and this is more my sense of whimsy coming out than a strongly serious suggestion (but if people like it, we could include it) - at the end of the revised article, we add a 'footnote' to the effect that there is a rumor/urban legend/conspiracy theory that the entire hypereconomic simulation in which the Affair took place was basically an S5 version of the ancient Atomic Age game known as Money Polo. Although since the details of the game have been lost to history, no one really knows if this is true and serious scholars don't believe a word of it.
Thoughts?
Todd
I suspect btw that this article actually dates from 2001, not 2010. The date is probably a typo from when we moved from the previous OA website to the current Content Management System/site. Anyway.
Some thoughts and notions - please note that I'm coming at this with the aim of making the article fit within our current take on the setting while avoiding rewriting the thing in it's entirety:
a) Move the whole Affair into virch. More specifically, have it take place inside the processing environment of a Matrioshka Hypernode (Omega Class). This gets rid of issues such as how an S4 mind could 'move back' to the NoCoZo (in the early project, we hadn't yet established that S4 and above don't really travel due to their size). If the whole thing is taking place in virtual space running on a stellar mass processor, running a purely software S4 is quite doable and 'moving' from one empire to another is as easy as changing ones email or the like.
b) Have said virtual space/hypernode be (or be part of) an Asymptote System. These date back to the earliest days of the project, but we've never really done much with them (although we should IMHO). Making this change would start to give the AS concept some love and would explain why a hypernode would have both NoCoZo and MPA virches/civs running inside it. Basically AS systems could be places where many species and civs converge (we could add this tweak to the current AS article with ease) and interact for the sake of cultural exchange or Cooperative Ventures and so on.
c) Make the Affair - and the larger 'hypereconomy' that is referenced - basically an economic virch simulation (it's been mentioned on the Discord that the NoCoZo is sort of a LARP exercise in libertarian economics and this could be in a similar - but different - vein). This lets all the economic technobabble remain basically unchanged and gets around the issue of how this sort of thing could happen in the 'real world' of the setting as we currently imagine it. The short answer is that it didn't - it's some kind of simulation being done for vaguely described/understood reasons by the archai and the participants are just going taking part in it because they want to (so economics as LARP basically).
d) Finally - and this is more my sense of whimsy coming out than a strongly serious suggestion (but if people like it, we could include it) - at the end of the revised article, we add a 'footnote' to the effect that there is a rumor/urban legend/conspiracy theory that the entire hypereconomic simulation in which the Affair took place was basically an S5 version of the ancient Atomic Age game known as Money Polo. Although since the details of the game have been lost to history, no one really knows if this is true and serious scholars don't believe a word of it.
Thoughts?
Todd