Sorry, forgot that.
@Bannockburn; sorry too for the misquote.
I take it you haven't had a chance to read the book yet? It's something of a paradigm shift from previous editions, so it's hard to respond to your questions without rewriting the stuff in the book.
Should I take that for being right about pointing some of these things? If you really had to rewrite things, that would mean it would not stand up...
Most of how the New New Matrix works isn't in the book, and it may or may not be explained in a future book,
Explaining too much is a way to shoot yourself indeed, but with so much change I guess a solid explanation at least for basic matrix theory would be as welcome it was about the basic magic theory for aura and spells and so on.
but here's what I understand of it, for what it's worth. The Matrix was designed to be as safe to the user as walking in a AAA-security Downtown area. As such, devices on the Matrix utilize a lot of distributed computing, since it's "safe" to share, and data security can be easily done with proper encryption (thus the Firewall boosting program). When you have all of the devices within a click or so helping out, computing speeds increase exponentially.
I actually love the idea of distributed computing. Not sure thought that in a cyberpunk world, the large host would not be able to intercept the packets they are distributed to (or just in range to receive. Wires have this advantage that you decide mostly to whom you send these, and relays are usually safe. Wireless is not. So they might intercept it, and try and use them to gain info, so that would probably be something serious people would avoid to configure as an option. Let's face it, a businessman don't need so much processing power that he needs to make is agenda hackable and is life not even worth pennies by pulling security breaches large like the Tranquillity Sea into his corp.
The first sin of security is "bring your own device", and the second is "make it wireless". Even crypted, since people are able to hack device, they would be able to decrypt packets. Hosts would do it in a matter of seconds. And I don't believe the corps would see that with a bad eye, given that data is info, power and blackmail (even more power)..
Also, distributed computing is not of any help in some cases: wired reflexes were just more conductive than nervous fibers, hence messages went faster. plus a bunch of adrenaline stimulators. And Reaction enhancers were replacements in the spine, If I am correct. So how distributed computing help there, in the improvement of the conductivity of these implants?
I actually think the idea is great. And the time of price and reward and risk is also. But by giving more opportunity to players to find their own risks and rewards instead of sometimes pushing it into their throat (I don't know if it was deliberate or just how it feels -no disrespect intended but I am not alone there, some people used words like convoluted explanations or shoehorned ...) so they can't really appreciate it and discuss it to what it is worth, you would have made a better decision, IMHO.
And it is a pity cause the rest of new ideas can usually be great in game.
We didn't forget. It may return in an expansion book somewhere. It may need retooled first though.
Well, that would have been one of the first thing to do, but indeed it would break a lot of the new things you would like people to get used to.
So it is less a need of retooling (SR5 was not written in a day) and more a practical way to give people no chance to shift from the paradigm "wireless risk/reward", even when it is done in a wrong way (yes, I said it, indeed, I only take it for my opinion only and not for absolute truth. But seems like I am not alone and there is a lot of logic reasons in why I don't like so much most implementations we have been shown -while, I admit that could be the only wrong examples in the system, with good things everywhere else. I would just wish it. That would be the best case)