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House Matrix History

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liquidmorpheme

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« on: <01-18-25/1737:25> »
The players I've been running with for a few years now have been pretty enthusiastic about some Matrix verisimilitude I wrote to make it easier to anchor Matrix plots to plausible grounding, a kind of technical addendum to Matrix history. It adds but does not retcon/alter, so I thought I'd leave it here in case it solves anything for other GMs:

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Trinary Bits

We'll start with this first of the major computer breakthroughs.  The quantum revolution added the value of "maybe" to the "yes" and "no" of digital hardware, and the impact on computing and what it was capable of was extraordinary. Of course people had predicted its effect on speeds, encryption, and so forth, but very few people predicted its emergent properties, how it would change the relationship between humanity and machines.

The first programming languages that responded to the change were notable for the inclusion of structures that moved beyond logical function to what could only be called intention or meaning. Developers were not quick to take them up, considering them radical experiments of starry-eyed MIT&T grads, but neuroscientists working them for virtual brain modeling sounded the call when several projects at once reported model interactions consistent with psychology. These were not actually artificial intelligences, these model brains, merely sophisticated assemblages of rules that excelled at their representations of reality. Nonetheless, they grabbed the attention of scientists and coders all over the planet, because importantly, no one writing the models had any idea it was going to happen.

From there things advanced at breakneck speed. With the ability to easily code software that was flexible, natively adaptive and adept at handling ambiguity, coders, hackers, megacorps, and enthusiasts everywhere jumped in. Computer scientists borrowed from materials science and began applying structures suggested by biology to their code. Applications to machine-brain interfaces were immediate and wildly successful. Military applications, when a few of them became known, were absolutely chilling. Protheheuristic programming, as it came to be called, evolved to give us decking and the Crash Virus of 2029, and it was undoubtedly the trigger of sentience in Psychotrope/Mirage, the Sixth World's first AI.

Variable Code

Machine-brain interface's (now called Direct Neural Interface) rise to prominence is due almost entirely to the development of protheheuristic programming's 2.0 moment, variable code [mentioned in the 5E core rulebook, but only briefly]. This time the advancement was not so ubiquitous—grasping the computational engineering behind its foundational concepts was simply beyond most amateurs and even many professionals (much to the pleasure of the megacorps who created it). The goal of this coding paradigm was software that could handle orders-of-magnitude higher complexity without developer assistance, that could even develop itself given the right code seed, and systems integration that could proceed automatically, with fully capable auto-debugging,  and error correction. It worked. Very quickly unintentional computer problems (haha) of every sort, from the macro level to the individual user, became a thing of the past.

Virtual Reality

It came at a cost, though. Code in a constant state of flux, that responded radically differently in system than in the lab, that rewrote itself so fast it could never even be read, was too much for an individual coder to tackle on their own. Enter DNIs, which allowed developers to work improvisationally by thinking through the logic-reason flow of a computational problem, while variable-coded hardware interpreted the data and applied it to whatever transit code schema was operating on that system in that particular nanosecond. Many did their work in VR, to take advantage of virtual metaphors and data representations to help them visualize and think through their mental legwork and logical problem-solving.

The hardware became the key. And the lock. Without tech that could manage the interpretation to and from transit code schema, no user had any of hope of creating in the new digital universe (or of breaking its security). The first decks were merely portable devices for working variable code (later weaponized to a shocking degree by the U.S. government). But no megacorp had any intention of giving away their exclusive control over the digital trough from which the world feeds, the Matrix. And so decks became the province of the elite. And the underground.

Matrix 2070

The wireless mesh of 2070, utopian as it turned out to be, was originally intended as a megacorp coup. It was believed that a Matrix that responded perfectly to even the simplest user, that was as easy as breathing and more accessible than air, would tighten their grip even further over the commercial lives of the masses, allowing commodification of even individual thoughts. To accomplish this, though, it was not possible to keep interpreter hardware out of the loop. The new Matrix would need code transition nodes as part of the global mesh, accessible only under tightly controlled circumstances and at specified permission levels (so they hoped).

It was a disaster for them. Hackers everywhere figured out instantly how to access the nodes, even write them in as proxies for their network routes, in part because too many devices needed access. The mesh had manufacturers everywhere loading permitted devices into products of every conceivable kind. Toasters. Hair pieces. Residential doors. Underwear. Everyone wanted to take advantage of the commercial potential of the new Matrix's responsiveness and usability.

Thanks to extremely poor planning and outrageous greed, hackers (well, at least the non-technomantic among them) were for the first time since the variable-protheheuristic revolution cracking the Matrix—and everything connected to it, including said underwear—without a deck.

Coup Redux

The rest you know. de la Mar and the Corporate Court. Grids. Hosts. GOD. The latest iteration of the Matrix is a megacorp's dream, the ultimate paywalled garden. Not a single bit of it, from its global architecture to the hosted content to the commlinks that access it, is under any real user control. The hosts are all property of the 1%, each one approved by the Matrix's governing body before it's built. User input is form-and-content limited by the iron-clad protocols that dictate even the look of individual icons. No one goes anywhere or does anything meshed that isn't censored, curated, dictated, or signed off on by someone with money and power. It leaves no room for niches or subversive secrets. It is, to the Corporate Court, exceedingly predictable.

And profitable. Turns out the 2070 Matrix was the perfect hook to drag people in, right before sinking them down to the grids. Which are arbitrary access tiers. They tell folks its about bandwidth and load management, but any hacker knows you can use the public to jump to a grid halfway around the world and the problems disappear. Engineered hierarchy. You buy the right to buy what only the masters are selling.

Matrix 2075 Imagined

No more transition nodes, obviously. Decks once again rule the day. What we know about the architecture of it suggests the VR I/O engine (pronounced vree-oh engine for those in the know) is on a layer close to the kernel, if not right above it. Gives every process immediate access to a protheheuristic visualization, punching right through all the other protocol layers for direct interaction. But it's got a powerful gatekeeper deciding what gets to stay hidden and what doesn't.

GOD? No ones knows. Mapping the backbone protocol the thing runs on, whatever they wrote when they trashed 2070, has proven difficult. Hacking's greatest defeat. We can raid files, crack hosts, smoke IC, and still we don't know how to stop Overwatch. How GOD can see and judge everything we do. Why the MARK system plays so fast and loose with permissions (deliberate?). Where the data physically resides. Doubtless these ground rules are variable-coded into the firmware of every machine that serves the mesh to the world, centralization by coordinated repetition, but we have not yet broken through. Something strange happening in the Foundation of the thing. To some it feels like sentience. To some it feels like magic.

Whatever it is, the only thing keeping the underground from disappearing forever is the not-so-humble, massively expensive and dangerously illegal deck, with its hardware to make exploits reality. The Sixth World, if you can believe it, has gotten grimmer.

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« Reply #1 on: <01-20-25/1048:07> »
I like that history.  OK if I share it with players in my game?

liquidmorpheme

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« Reply #2 on: <01-22-25/0909:41> »
Absolutely! It solved some story problems for us, so I'm sharing with anyone who finds it useful

 

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