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Post by Zholud on Jan 2, 2005 12:57:56 GMT -5
I guessed that if we try to link STC and pre-Anargo micro-empires with society or societies of the DAoT, we should define the Age 1st. for example, I always viewed the core-worlds society relatively homogenic with strange mix of cyberpunk and social utopia. From cyberpunk come idea of mega corporations and the business which rules the government, as well as trade wars and other things. From utopia I take high subsistence levels, universal suffrage, and ability to survive even without working. I doubt scientist-favouring people, it’s not my view at all. The outer worlds were more savage in sense that even with Navigators it takes months to get there. They are basically frontiers with all that philosophy and imaginary. What others think on this, rather limited post?
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Post by malika on Jan 2, 2005 13:26:59 GMT -5
Ok...I would have to place this first. the Dark Age of Technology was before the Age of Strife but after the Golden Age of Technology right? Would this also be the time of the war against the Iron Men? Or was that at the end of the DAoT?
Im fond of the cyberpunk idea, perhaps also try to look at influences from the Alien movies, the whole big companies being in charge thing, more conflicts between human factions instead of an united humanity under the Emperor.
I dont know if humanity was always that xenophobic, if not we could also see a big influence from that, influences from other races on human culture, AI's still existed, so their 'culture' would also have affected human culture.
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Post by CELS on Jan 2, 2005 13:39:57 GMT -5
Do you mean the Anargo sector, Zholud, or the Age of Technology in the whole galaxy?
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Post by Kage2020 on Jan 2, 2005 14:04:42 GMT -5
I must admit that I'm not overtly fond of the idea of the denatured government ala the zaibatsu from the cyberpunk genre (e.g. Gibson). More 'cyberpunk' and less 'shadowrun', for example, with the latter going to the extremes of extraterritorial corporations, etc. No, not for me.
While it is true that business has always had its claws into government, I am against business being that government to the extremes that the cyberpunk genre often takes it to.
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Post by malika on Jan 2, 2005 14:07:39 GMT -5
I dont want to see that these companies are the governemtn...but I like the idea that they are the real powerholders, they suply the military, they suply everything in society, some companies might even have their own small private armies. Stuff like that. The government not powerful enough to actually do something against these companies even if they wanted to.
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Post by Sojourner on Jan 2, 2005 14:11:11 GMT -5
I'm leaning towards thinking on a galactic scale it was 'dark' because of the terrible things that could happen to you thanks to runaway technology. Things like being dissolved by nanobots or torn limb from limb by relentless killer androids or government organisations being infiltrated by replicants or being erased from the timeline at the moment of your conception by chrono saboteurs.
All under the control of the company executives who being implanted with MIU technology could control all of this with a thought. To Imperial historians looking back, it would look very much like witchcraft without even the providence of the Emperor to redeem oneself.
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Post by malika on Jan 2, 2005 14:16:24 GMT -5
Was cloning technology available back then? I mean that could be pure evil too considering what you can do with it...
Just send a copy of your foes to destroy their resources, facilities, etc.
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Post by Kage2020 on Jan 2, 2005 15:13:01 GMT -5
I'm leaning towards thinking on a galactic scale it was 'dark' because of the terrible things that could happen to you thanks to runaway technology. Very Diamond Age and cyberpunk...
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Post by RascalLeader on Jan 2, 2005 19:01:26 GMT -5
The Dark Age of technology would rather be like Alastair Reynolds novel - Chasm City; where technology is begining to go wrong. Everythings in a state of upheavel.
Its sort of the start of the decay of the Golden Age, the preview to the grand fall of humanity. One Minute it is all nice and good, then you get nano technology running out of control twisting living beings into monsters. Corperations and goverments are in a secreative war, not fought on battlefields but through alliances and trade. No one dares to start a real war because they could wipe each other out in a second. Knowledge is contained; the STC are missused. Only those with any real power have all the luxury of such things.
Towards the end things get much worse with several wars finally braking out. To defeat an enermy fraction they use special forces to destroy their STC in prempt for invasions or genocide. Thus begins the story of cival war and alien subjugations that marr the Age of Strife.
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Post by Philip on Jan 2, 2005 19:16:55 GMT -5
I always thought the GAoT civilization was ticking along quite nicely until Psykers started popping up everywhere.
Psykers are the one thing that humans of that era didn’t fully understand, or consider the threat they posed, cultural inertia meant things got out of hand very quickly and when people finally ‘got it’ it was far too late and they over reacted (as humans do when they get scared).
Humanity’s advanced/ efficient galaxy spanning empire collapsed into millions of isolated worlds filled with fear crazed people reacting in a less than ‘enlightened’ way.
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Post by CELS on Jan 2, 2005 19:30:11 GMT -5
What I don't understand is how people see nano-technology and crazy advanced stuff like that as common in the Dark Age of Technology, but gone without a trace in the Dark Millennium.
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Post by RascalLeader on Jan 2, 2005 19:54:17 GMT -5
The STC databases have all been taken out....
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Post by Philip on Jan 2, 2005 20:14:14 GMT -5
What I don't understand is how people see nano-technology and crazy advanced stuff like that as common in the Dark Age of Technology, but gone without a trace in the Dark Millennium. What makes you think it’s gone? I think hooking up the black carapace on space marines could be an area of nanotech, as is bionics, but I don’t think nanotech comes about in the ‘startrek’ sense (killer/ smart nanobots and all that). Molecular factories, performing specific tasks? Maybe, but not sentient all working together under a collective Borg like hive mind (that’s for the Necrons!). Nanotech just allows all the things we have now to be made very small, the only reason the Ad-Mec may stop non Ad-Mec using it is because it can create molecular computers, and that is probably the path to AI.
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Post by Kage2020 on Jan 2, 2005 22:54:10 GMT -5
Just a quicky, but some of you may remember a thread on Portent started by a certain someone *ahem* which was all about the obfuscation of technology within ritual and 'primitive' forms. This is, in essence, what it was all about.
And molecular computers are not necessarily the route to MI (note: note AI or PI; sorry, the pedantic streak has come out), if you actually believe that such an achievement is possible. Heck, you're just as "likely" to get emergent MIs out of the complex computing and information systems that the adeptus mechanicus have. In fact, emergent intelligences ('artificial', if you wish) already have a place in the 'fluff': Warp Entities.
Heck, I even use them to explain part of the 'fluff' on the Webway and Ynnaed (part of the whole Metarune gig) as well as the existence of the "Machine God" out of the Holy Altar...
But that was just a rather rapid divergence.
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Post by Philip on Jan 3, 2005 8:02:30 GMT -5
A fun divergence no the less.
Molecular computers, ie. Computers build using nanotech (not nanites) would be as complex as a biological system. Such a complex system (the basis of my Iron men) could be intelligent but more importantly self aware/ conscious.
Perhaps the (tying in my warp theories/ streams/ gods) the ultra fine process of these artificial ‘brains’ show up in the warp as a dense webs, perhaps dense enough to contain a ‘soul’ of sorts, ie is can have a warp sig.
In other words, all matter shows up in the warp as some manner of influence and that the humans mind and it processes shows up in the warp and a very fine web and acts as an ‘anchor for a soul’ or rather the complex warp shadow created by the brain system becomes a soul.
This means the not only can a molecular scale manufactured artificial intelligence be conscious, they can also have an artificial soul.
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