Net culture 2320 AD

[Waldemar]

Back in the 80's, 2300 AD joined the new trend of describing the net as a specific culture of its own. The net culture described in Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook, Deathwatch Program and in Rotten to the Core was not that original for its time, but basically the same hacker-inspired virtual deck cowboy culture derived from William Gibson's novel Neuromancer and RPG's such as Cyberpunk and Shadowrun (even down to Rotten to the Core using the notorious "choomba" and snarky comments in the sidebars).

Still, 2300 AD tried to describe something different, namely that the computer started up a culture of its own.

Since the passing of the heydays of cyberpunk, the virtual reality video game elite subculture described in 2300 AD, might look a bit quaint to us.

2320 AD describes the Link Network, mainly with its technology, and with the standards created by the École Polytechnique in the 2250's. Computer technology seems to make use of a lot of virtualisation and of easy user-friendly commands, so maybe an elite hacker culture isn't that prominent?

Perhaps the net culture in 2320 is affecting everyone more (at least in the Core) and in a more ubiquitious fashion? Instead of having control, as the old hacker, most users find themselves controlled by the computer?

 

[Waldemar]

Is there a Google, or a Google equivalent in 2320 AD?

 

[Higgipedia]

I think that the net, by 2300 would be completely integrated in reality. Cybergeneration started going there with their updated vision of the net. Take the evolution of the cell phone. I reckon that by 2300, you would be able to access the net using holograms either from a personal or community projector, maybe keep it private using special glasses so only you can see the data you are manipulating (although technology would certainly exist to see what you were doing).

I see the core worlds totally integrated, with hardly any dead space anywhere on Earth or Tirane. The colonies, especially on the French Arm post-Kafer War, will have it based upon the colonial infrastructure. If anything, in all cities and most towns. Maybe even house portals for the remote farmsteads.

Print media will likely be dead for all but legal documents, but even in 2008, the US Army is moving towards digital signatures off of our mandatory CAC cards on all Evals and Orders, so paper might just be for artists by 2300.

 

[BMonnery]

Remember, the Web wasn't that developed by the time of the Twilight War.

However, what is clear is that 2k3 doesn't have an Internet. It has a grid. That is, people don't own proper "computers" but rather terminals, connecting them via fibreoptics to computing hubs. That was how people expected the network to develop then, and it's how the computer scientists expect the net to develop. What we have now is probably an anomaly. In fact this is probably part of an integrated media system, the Terminal is your TV, Radio, Word Processor, Games Console etc.

 

[mike wightman]

It was always going to ba a problem that 2300 was based on the T2k back story - since it never came to pass a lot of what we take for granted now may never have even been invented in its current form due to public rejection of the tech that brought about the twilight war.

2320 having a slightly fudged backstory allows more of current technology to be included in the future and extrapolated upon.

 

[Waldemar]

It was always going to ba a problem that 2300 was based on the T2k back story - since it never came to pass a lot of what we take for granted now may never have even been invented in its current form due to public rejection of the tech that brought about the twilight war.

2320 having a slightly fudged backstory allows more of current technology to be included in the future and extrapolated upon.

Indeed. Then again...

Part of 2320 AD's charm is nostalgia, but it's smart nostalgia with potential. It asks "what if history had developed differently?", and I think you can do some fun things with it also when it comes to computer culture.

 

[kafka47]

Essentially the 2300AD universe is like the novels of the 1950s (minus the Asimov Unimac series). Computers are tied into national nets which then cooperate with other national nets. Earth/Cyberpunk sourcebook postulate that hackers the ones who spontaneously "privatize" (or piratize) the net from corporations and nation-states. If you don't like the cyberpunkish feel then one can maybe assume that there are virtual worlds upon virtual worlds in 2300AD and that money buys access.

High state-of-the-art immersive systems, a la gated communities, allows virtual immersion into a pseudo reality existance in which all activities can be done through universal computer via Geostationary satellites would be reserved for the well to do. This would have the appearance of Star Trek like environs.

The Middle would bear with much as we have now. Pay as you go access, with ISPs controlling content (ok, they do that more in China then say in the United States) but it is the principle. These could be run along broadband fiber optical cables. This would allow for some immersive content but mostly regulated through peripheral devices. Hardware could be designed for maximum comfort and aesthetic value. Think of an iPhone versus the bottom end cell phone of a few years back. What it harkens to me is a Minority Report type environ.

The bottom is the public system which the population whose lowest income exists. This is the Internet as we have it today. Hackers may liberate zones of the Middle or High content but do so at their peril. Most people are content to absorb what they are given and share information. Computing may emphasis usability but not immersion. This may be classic cyberpunk tropes or things like Asimov's Caves of Steel or similar novels of the 1950s.

This system worked very well for Traveller, it works less well for 2300AD until you overlay the system with a concept of social class**. Players as independent agents can navigate through all different levels depending upon their computing skills.

**For Traveller, I abandoned social class with the development of the leisure class formulation that appeared in an early volume of JTAS. In which Tech Level was the prime determinant of what type of "net" players are likely to encounter. Using the quotant of percentage of the population needed to work and how much was a factor of access.

 

[mike wightman]

If you really want to have fun with net culture then borrow from GURPS Transhuman Space...

 

[Anders]

As I see it, the Link is a lot like the French Minitel system. This means that micropayments are built in, you pay for accessing pages and surfing anonymously is hard. Most of the functions are commercial like trading, information lookup, downloading media and various community boards.

Unlike the WWW where it is easy to just put up a page, in this kind of system it has to be registered with some relevant authority or company to be possible to find. People can create pages on their own systems and tell others about them, but as long as they are not in the registry they will not be widely reachable: since the Link is built on ad hoc-links between neighbouring computers it is quite hard to find a particular computer; the big net companies are essentially running their own DNS and search engines allowing subscribers to find stuff.

However, this was likely the "old Link", the systems you now find in the colonies. As I see it, the information revolution really got started in the core around 2300, and these days much of the clunkiness of the Link has been hidden under smarter application layers. That moves the world towards our WWW world and maybe a transhuman space augmented reality environment. Of course, these systems do not work well when moved into the slow and low-bandwidth colonies.

As for hacker culture, I think the original 2300AD hackers were very much like the classic hackers of the 1970's - high level of technological skill and education, more grad students than pimply teenagers. The cyberpunk 80's hackers were the result of the emergence of cheap home computers exposing a much larger group to the possibilities of hacking. Hmm, if this analogy continues, and we add my above idea about the information revolution, what is happening in the Core is that we now have reached the current stage of spammers, botnet writers and hackers forming organized criminal groups.

 

[aramis]

Sounds a lot like the old UUCP and WWIV nets, Anders, only full-up.