I've been mucking with a lot of this in the back of my mind. I do like playing with these themes and taking a peek beyond the event horizon at the singularity beyond. The Wolkenritter dance around the hive-mind concept in a way that I just found interesting to do. (Even though I forgot one already existed - in way).
What can you do when you've got a DNI to a computer? Ultimately, the only limit there is software, and computing power. And even if you can't get all that computing power inside the cyber'd head, you can certainly run links to external hardware processing for items where latency isn't an issue. Ultimately, the cyber involved could have various full or over-size bodies with different capabilities and software interfaces that they can swap between. The Wolkenritter were so complex they originally couldn't live without external computational support.
Genre savviness is a thing - it's hard not to be when there's a lot of fiction out there where Transhuman technologies Go Horribly Wrong. On the other hand, I'd hate for things to go the Federation route. When we were writing Cat's Cradle, we always intended Quattro's tech to be incomplete - a mad's madness that had some severe limitations on its use to the point where, as it was in 2015. it's nothing more than a proof of concept, but no real effective uses beyond the malicious. It's far easier to create an abuseful version of a technology, than it is to create a useful version. But it's still possible that it will lead to something useful in the future - it can be finished.
So it was put away for future research because it still had interesting potential worth exploring. Henning's doing things with it amongst the catgirls, but it's taking time and effort to makes something enuinely safe and useful and repeatable out of it and they don't want to frighten people who are genuinely afraid of this technology. I wouldn't call it a McGuffin when Catgirl industries is quietly being built around it, the hardware is still extant at Grunthal (And was used again on Daisuke Edo in a way that both saved his life, and made describing certain relationships much harder) and the creator....***mumble****. And it's still having an effect 8-9 years later.
It's very risky stuff to play with and experiment with - especially sapient trials because of the fragile nature of the mind. If you screw up, you either destroy your mind, destroy your volunteer's mind or have another fun result like catgirl hive-minds so doing real transhumanist stuff and doing it reliably is still extraordinarily hard. If you're not worried about quality of life for the failures or reliability.... you can take a lot of shortcuts but you get a much less useful product.
It isn't hard to imagine there being a negative bias towards the extreme end of transhumanist technologies and modifications for a long time. In part, because of the Boskone doing things like Bersekers and other super-warrior projects. Berserkers, for example, likely led to the development of Quality-of-Life criteria for cybernetics enforced by the Cyber Confederation to keep people from abusing these technologies and maintain proper oversight of what research actually is happening on the subject.
It is the Age of Exploration, and not all Exploration involves going places. It's not about charting nebulas and planets, but exploring the unseen possibilities of existance.
Or Eclipse Phase with Magitech. Magitech combat cyborgs with hot-swappable bodies, farcaster backup, and external neuroprocessing support... giggle
Practically, it helps to take baby-steps. To get more mileage out of an interesting universe and to make it feel like a development, rather than BLAM. Part of what's holding me back isn't the genre-directive as such - but that I don't really want to change things too much too fast for everyone else and go off the deep end. Or do too much for myself.
On the other hand, there is the elephant in the room that is Dee and the other S-class AI's that're already massively beyond human. Who's to say they aren't in some way exerting a subtle influence to make sure that whatever takeoff happens isn't a full blown hard-launch like the TITANs.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
What can you do when you've got a DNI to a computer? Ultimately, the only limit there is software, and computing power. And even if you can't get all that computing power inside the cyber'd head, you can certainly run links to external hardware processing for items where latency isn't an issue. Ultimately, the cyber involved could have various full or over-size bodies with different capabilities and software interfaces that they can swap between. The Wolkenritter were so complex they originally couldn't live without external computational support.
Genre savviness is a thing - it's hard not to be when there's a lot of fiction out there where Transhuman technologies Go Horribly Wrong. On the other hand, I'd hate for things to go the Federation route. When we were writing Cat's Cradle, we always intended Quattro's tech to be incomplete - a mad's madness that had some severe limitations on its use to the point where, as it was in 2015. it's nothing more than a proof of concept, but no real effective uses beyond the malicious. It's far easier to create an abuseful version of a technology, than it is to create a useful version. But it's still possible that it will lead to something useful in the future - it can be finished.
So it was put away for future research because it still had interesting potential worth exploring. Henning's doing things with it amongst the catgirls, but it's taking time and effort to makes something enuinely safe and useful and repeatable out of it and they don't want to frighten people who are genuinely afraid of this technology. I wouldn't call it a McGuffin when Catgirl industries is quietly being built around it, the hardware is still extant at Grunthal (And was used again on Daisuke Edo in a way that both saved his life, and made describing certain relationships much harder) and the creator....***mumble****. And it's still having an effect 8-9 years later.
It's very risky stuff to play with and experiment with - especially sapient trials because of the fragile nature of the mind. If you screw up, you either destroy your mind, destroy your volunteer's mind or have another fun result like catgirl hive-minds so doing real transhumanist stuff and doing it reliably is still extraordinarily hard. If you're not worried about quality of life for the failures or reliability.... you can take a lot of shortcuts but you get a much less useful product.
It isn't hard to imagine there being a negative bias towards the extreme end of transhumanist technologies and modifications for a long time. In part, because of the Boskone doing things like Bersekers and other super-warrior projects. Berserkers, for example, likely led to the development of Quality-of-Life criteria for cybernetics enforced by the Cyber Confederation to keep people from abusing these technologies and maintain proper oversight of what research actually is happening on the subject.
It is the Age of Exploration, and not all Exploration involves going places. It's not about charting nebulas and planets, but exploring the unseen possibilities of existance.
Or Eclipse Phase with Magitech. Magitech combat cyborgs with hot-swappable bodies, farcaster backup, and external neuroprocessing support... giggle
Practically, it helps to take baby-steps. To get more mileage out of an interesting universe and to make it feel like a development, rather than BLAM. Part of what's holding me back isn't the genre-directive as such - but that I don't really want to change things too much too fast for everyone else and go off the deep end. Or do too much for myself.
On the other hand, there is the elephant in the room that is Dee and the other S-class AI's that're already massively beyond human. Who's to say they aren't in some way exerting a subtle influence to make sure that whatever takeoff happens isn't a full blown hard-launch like the TITANs.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?