Role of the megacorps in the late timeline

[Drashner1]

I like this idea. It certainly makes it more interesting and dynamic. Though, I wonder how to fit those megacorps described as being run by transapients, like, say, Hyperion, into this.

I wonder if the transaps would even bother with a megacorp outside the roleplaygrounds.

We might or might not have to tweak dates to do this but - we could potentially say that the early megacorps were sometimes/often (depending definitions) run by transapients in secret. During the early Fed the S1 came out of the closet anyway and the number of megacorps run by them openly went up. Somewhere along the line several different things could happen (dates and actual order of events TBD at this point):

a) Modos start experimenting with different types of augmented mental architectures in an attempt to either become S1 or invent other types of mind/society that can deal with the S1 (and possibly later S2) on more equal terms. Exact motivations (competition, curiosity, seeing augmented/post-singularity existence as the next stage in evolution or as a path to transcendence, whatever) could vary from group to group as well as the results, level of success/failure.

b) The megacorps themselves could start to evolve (said evolution possibly directed by the transap in charge) into something other than a strictly commercial entity as we are used to when considering RL corporations. Exactly what that might look like is open for discussion and it's entirely possible that different 'megacorps' developed into different types of organizations even if they were all under the 'megacorp' term. This might be done early on to help create a form of social structure that could maintain itself over interstellar distances/travel times (a corporate culture) and then eventually evolve into an attempt to compete with/replace the Federation Ontology when that began to run into its limits on maintaining a 'cohesive' interstellar civ. These/some of these might operate very different from a RL life corporation/business although they might employ titles, terms, and social structures derived from business and 'corporate culture'.

c) Thinking again in terms of diversity - maybe the organizations that didn't maintain corporate like social structures moved to other things and ended up becoming the Great Houses - which might or might not use some semi-singular 'great house like' social organization or might use a variety of different ones with the 'Great House' terminology simply being an umbrella term for 'any group that explicitly does not use megacorp memetic/social/cultural structures to organize itself'. Which could result in a lot of diversity under this term as well.

The end result is a variety of different societies all interacting with each other (and in the process perhaps contributing to the fall of the Federation if we decide this contributed to pushing it to and beyond its limits that much faster). An added complication or factor is the ongoing appearance of higher S-levels over time, since S2 and S3 minds both appeared during the First Federation period. Not sure about S4 or higher off the top of my head - and we might want to think about pushing some of those dates back to spread the appearance of new S-levels out more, assuming that the possible ripple effects don't become prohibitive. Main point being that I think we should move away from all the major setting developments happening during the First Federation on general principles and this might be an opportunity to do a bit of that if necessary.

My 2c worth,

Todd