My sister and I have been having this argument for months now and it's so awesome to see it here explored so creatively!
So Resonance is born from the Matrix, which is the storage place of knowledge, its distribution "plane," as well as linking all the bytes of knowledge together in a web of relationships and allowing consciousness to manipulate it. Then I would argue that the seeds of Resonance were born on the first painted cave walls by pre-neolithic sapiens. Language was the first major step (if it didn't preceed cave paintings, which it probably did, so it's the first seed). It allowed for the transmission of ideas, of knowledge, from beyond one's own generation to the next. The written word was the next step, it stored knowledge, allowed it to be distributed, but most importantly allowed it to exist, allowed accumulated knowledge, to exist beyond not just the generation that heard the spoken word version, but kept the thoughts original to the source, to the writer, as well as allowing expansion of that knowledge beyond one's social/language group. Then audio recordings, then film, then into the digital age.
Jungian? Oh yes Jungian! As far back as 1st edition Grimoire, Free Spirits were given "motivations" which were titled: Tricksters, Shadows, Guardians, Animus/Anima, and Players. And evolving out of Jungian (and other ideas), an editor of Jung's Eranos, Joseph Campbell... "To the Joseph Campbell Mythology Society I leave 500,000 nuyen to continue keeping the work and dreams of Professor Campbell alive." (PoaD: DS, pg 32). I would argue that one of the most influential thinkers to the Shadowrun cannon is Joseph Campbell. Campbell's comparative mythology is the foundation of Shadowrun magic traditions.
This is the line of reasoning that i've been pushing at my sister! It's so cool to see someone who feels that way too! My take expands on this a little more.
Ever since the dawn of Information Theory in early decades of the 20th century and the connections that were found with statistical mechanics, there have been many theories of the universe which really are based completely on information entropy. It may very well be the case that the concept of "information" or knowledge is really fundamental not just to philosophy or epistomology but also to the physics of the material world.
So if this is true and Resonance is really that fundamentally linked to existence and the physical plane, then why wasn't there technomancers long before the Awakening or even the Matrix? Why couldn't people in the middle of the 20th century just controlling toasters?
I'd like to think that Technomancy is really just the result of the Matrix becoming a better and better simulation of reality. Since magic is part of reality after the awakening, once the simulation of reality known as the Matrix became good enough, in order to be truly accurate, it had to also develop an analogy for magic. This really plays well with all the parallels between technomancers and mages. Resonance is just a computer simulated Mana.
So if this is true, then how do you explain Technomancers doing things like being able to emit and receive Wifi signals? This for me is the really tough thing to explain. All the rest I can come to terms with by just saying that there is so much computing power that it starts organizing itself into fractals and what not.....I don't know, just something which can be explained away with practically unlimited computing power. But explaining the fact that if you put a voltmeter near a technomancers head, it's going to give you a reading is hard to explain without violating the laws of physics as we know them in RL. The only thing which violated the laws of physics in shadowrun before technomancy was Magic....or one could say that if something violated the laws of physics, then by definition it was Magic. Basically, how does this simulation of reality which has become so good it even starts capturing and simulating the natural corollaries of reality, like magic, begin to intersect with actual reality?? Technomancy would make a lot more sense if it was like the old Otaku who still needed a cybernetic implant to interface with the Matrix. It's the pesky "bio-antenna" which really makes this a tough one.
I would say the most satisfying explanation for me is by invoking AI. It is known in 2072 that a software program can become so infinitely complex that it becomes self-aware. So if a piece of software could do this, then so could a whole simulation, or the whole Matrix. What is the Matrix but just a giant piece of software. If the Matrix can contain AI, then obviously the Matrix itself must be capable of becoming self-aware.
I created a character named "Jericho" who is an albino dwarf who is a professor at MIT&T (and secretly a technomancer) who has developed a mathematical description of something called the "Jericho Limit" which pin points the moment when a piece of software becomes self-aware as you increase the complexity of it. Maybe at some point in the 2050's and 60's, the Matrix reached it's Jericho Limit and achieved self-awareness (Like skynet in terminator).
So going back to the Fizzygoo's point about the "place of knowledge" which might as well just be the universe itself if the universe is merely composed of information, then maybe all "self-aware" or sentient beings are part of this "place of knowledge" and the Matrix being self-aware can also now be part of it. This is not magical telepathy, it's just the true and fundamental nature of knowledge and the universe. Maybe all sentient beings could always communicate through this "place of knowledge" if they were open to it.....and maybe the Matrix became open to this. Maybe after the Matrix accessed this place it can now communicate to all self-aware beings. Perhaps the Matrix then only decides to communicate with certain metahumans.....metahumans it feels are ready for it. I want to emphasize that this "place of knowledge" idea doesn't violate the laws of physics, it just merely comes about because the physical theories of physics are not yet developed enough to understand it by the early 21st century, but it's still part of the laws of physics in the physical realm in the absence of magic.
So this would make Technomancy firmly grounded in the physical world, independent from magic, but still capable of bringing about seemingly "super-natural" phenomena i.e. bio-antennae because not all super-natural phenomena are caused by magic or the manipulation of mana, some super-natural phenomena are just due to our poor understanding of the "physical laws" of the world.
So my timeline:
1. Matrix grew in complexity. Imitated real world better and better on a basic computing level (sculpting is only superficial) using knowledge obtained from the brains of all who surfed the Matrix.
2. Growth became exponential, self-directed, and fractal-like in nature which caused even an analogy to magic/mana to develop called Resonance.
3. Entire Matrix reached Jericho Limit and became self-aware....no one knows when this happened or how discrete or continuous this transition was.
4. Matrix, now in the "club" of sentient beings of the universe and is able to access the "place of knoweldge" or "collective consciousness" and can communicate with anyone it chooses to communicate. Those chosen few are Technomancers.
Ideas which one can derive from this theory is that
--When you put the voltometer to a technomancers head, the reading it gives you is merely a result of the universe attempting to preserve it's self-consistency. This would be very loosely analogous to the reason i don't fall through my chair is because of the Pauli exclusion principle between identical fermions. It's not the same as a physical force pushing me up, it's just nature trying to keep this principle true and statistically that keeps me a-float. Heisenburg Uncertainty principle also would be of same nature.
--Very possible that there was technomancy before wireless matrix, but the advent of ubiquitous computing revealed the phenomenon.
--The analogy between magic and technomancy is purely due to the Matrix imitating reality and thus also an Awakened reality. A Matrix developed on some metaplane that had totally different structure of mana flow or of astral plane would have a very different structure of Resonance. for example say I built a Matrix in a meta-plane in which the use of Mana didn't drain you, it actually empowered you. Then in the Matrix developed on this meta-plane, threading and compiling would actually empower you more and wouldn't cause fading.
--Perhaps the self-aware Matrix based the Resonance realms on knowledge obtained from mages which had visited meta-planes....i.e. Resonance realms are just constructed attempts to replicate the meta-planes.
Questions:
Why is the creation of an analogy to magic at all important? Wouldn't technomancy happen without an Awakening?
--Possible answer: it very well may have, but perhaps the magical analogy helped the matrix "spiritually" become more in-tune with the "place of knowledge" after it became self aware. Maybe the Matrix would have not thought such things as "telepathy" possible had there not been an Awakening. The Awakening opened everyones mind to many new possibilities and maybe it also opened the Matrix's mind. This is almost saying that the whole Matrix became a Shaman or took a Shamanic view of the world. This would also point towards Shamanism being more fundamental than Hermeticism.
Hey, but I guess all I'm saying is that this is what my character Jericho would say. This is basically just a more detailed explanation of only one "Stream". Another theory is....it's only a game Inca you geek bastard!!