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Topic Review: Megacorps
#6
Some additional thoughts on this that just came to me tonight:

1) The early (Interplanetary Age) megacorps might have created the ancient ancestors of Homo Economicus.

a) The ever increasing economic complexity of solar civilization and the development of DNI and (comparatively primitive) augments early in the timeline could combine with the megacorps paying for people to get higher level and greater than normal numbers of augments in order to operate effectively/with greater effectiveness. Imagine Slack combined with DNI to put it right into your mind (which could be utopian or downright dystopian depending on your experience or views of Slack).

b) The company paying for these could operate in a manner somewhere between tuition reimbursement (a not uncommon benefit in corporate America) and indentured servitude. Getting the implants commits you to working for the corp for some number of years to pay off your debt.

c) There might also be elements of non-compete clauses in there as well - even after you pay off your debt it's hard to go to another company and take your implants with you, etc.

2) During the Federation period the megacorps (and possibly others) turned to tech similar in principle to Unityware (Unityware - Text by Anders Sandberg
Software to enable the formation of group intellects. Named for the Nova Terra clade Unity, the first marketers of unityware.), along with their increased use of augments both to help them operate over interstellar distances and in reaction to the transapients.

a) The megacorps (or at least some of them) saw themselves in competition with the transapients and went in for variant forms of group minds and augmentation to try to compete. Ultimately they failed and either ended up being taken over by transapients or becoming (at least in the core areas/'Boards of Directors"/'Executive level with the greatest amount of augmentation and group mind interlinkage) transapients themselves.

b) During this period various other group mind variants might also have appeared - the Deeper Covenant is one such that is still around and there could certainly be others we haven't described yet. And/or - I think it was suggested in some of the supporting material Dfleymmes1134 posted that some minor polities currently mentioned but not detailed could be modified to this.

c) An element of these corporate group mind sorta things could be something like the 'xiao'(sp?) or mental domination that is practiced by the Sobornost multi-copy society whereby copies close to the original 'Founders' can dominate those farther away (as in copy of a copy of a copy of a copy,etc.) with the Founders dominating all. Sort of.

3) As part of the Fall of the Federation, the megacorps moved to compete with the Federation and become alternative power centers to it. Including providing alternative ways to live/think - the aforementioned 'corporate culture' - possibly enforced by 'corporate' memetics, group mind variant software, and enhanced augmentation.

4) Although the megacorps are supplanted as the center of power by the Second Federation and later the Sephirotics - they still continue to exist up to Y11k. They still retain elements of corporate structure and such, but also the group mind element is much more in play, making them somewhat like huge individual entities in some ways. They are a sort of symbiosis between a ruling transapient (S1-S3) and a host of subjects spread across light-years.

Or something like that. Thoughts?

Todd
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Messages In This Thread
Topic Review: Megacorps - by Drashner1 - 08-26-2020, 01:42 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Drashner1 - 08-26-2020, 01:48 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Worldtree - 08-26-2020, 03:04 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Worldtree - 08-26-2020, 03:13 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Drashner1 - 09-10-2020, 01:00 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Worldtree - 08-26-2020, 03:14 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Drashner1 - 08-30-2020, 02:22 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Rynn - 09-10-2020, 09:38 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Worldtree - 09-11-2020, 01:46 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Drashner1 - 09-11-2020, 11:06 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Worldtree - 09-11-2020, 02:29 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Drashner1 - 09-14-2020, 12:39 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by QwertyYerty - 09-28-2020, 02:19 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Worldtree - 09-28-2020, 02:46 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Rakuen07 - 09-28-2020, 11:26 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by The Astronomer - 11-17-2020, 10:48 AM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Drashner1 - 11-17-2020, 01:25 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Technothrope - 11-18-2020, 05:23 AM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Worldtree - 11-18-2020, 06:29 AM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Technothrope - 11-18-2020, 06:47 AM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Drashner1 - 01-03-2021, 01:05 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Rynn - 01-13-2021, 08:11 AM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Vitto - 01-08-2021, 04:24 AM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by MacGregor - 01-13-2021, 09:33 AM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by MacGregor - 01-13-2021, 10:25 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Rynn - 01-14-2021, 08:21 AM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Drashner1 - 01-14-2021, 01:05 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by The Astronomer - 06-20-2021, 12:01 AM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Drashner1 - 06-20-2021, 11:03 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Vitto - 07-15-2021, 09:25 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by The Astronomer - 07-15-2021, 09:42 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Vitto - 07-15-2021, 10:45 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Drashner1 - 07-15-2021, 11:10 PM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Rakuen07 - 07-17-2021, 01:32 AM
RE: Topic Review: Megacorps - by Vitto - 07-17-2021, 02:54 AM

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