Another game that never was. I was going to run a Savage Worlds cyberpunk game, but it never got off the ground. This was an essay I wrote for myself as a thought-starter and background information sort of thing.
The Technological System is nothing less than the sum total of the organization, techniques, drives, and capabilities of modern existence. In the Technological System, efficiency is king, trumping nationalism, economics, even biology. That which can be made efficient thrives; that which can not withers. That includes ideologies, historical conflicts, cultures … and people.
By the mid-21st century, the new milieu had re-shaped the world. Society, as humanity had understood it for thousands of years, had become a miniscule, pitiful thing, only continuing through the power of the Technological System. For example, new religions, totally sublimated to the necessities of technological efficiency, overwhelmed the world in the first few decades of the 21st century. The Liberal Statist Conformists (not that they called themselves that) took on a leading position in the West, enfolding progressivists, communists, environmentalists, and ethnic/group activists of all types alike in its totalizing mentality. Islamic Nihilism overthrew much of the social order in what was called the third world, paving the way for hyper-technological reformation. China managed to create for itself a stable, isolationist system of high-tech plutocrats mercilessly controlling vast masses of people in a factory system, though at enormous cost. Other regions of the world, too poor and underdeveloped to take part in the Technological System, were reduced to the periphery of civilization, left alone to eke a bare existence using traditional folkways. The vast mass of urban humanity fared little better, striving to piece together enough education, experience, or connections to get a menial job servicing the System, or else dropping out altogether, giving their consciousness over to drug or artificial-reality induced illusion.
Two historical developments were instrumental in creating this new world order. Gulf War III began as Islamic countries persuaded the UN to endorse forcible regime change for Israel/Palestine. Islamic Nihilist groups began vigorous bombing campaigns all over the world, enabling the West to adopt worldwide security measures that eventually had the effect of rendering most military power in the world over to the UN, and most power in the UN over to a Western-led coalition. Moreover, nationalism and patriotism were successfully labeled sinful after the US nuking of Tehran, in response to a series of savage terrorist attacks. The UN was given a mandate to create a variety of international zones, or Interzones, where local authority was sublimated to the UN. Various corporations and alliances were given monopolies and concessions in the Interzones, charged with maintaining labor and consumption. World security and economic security were inextricably linked, and the System reigned supreme.
The second development was the birth of the first true Artificial Intelligences (AI). It had long been supposed that AI would be generated by a continued evolution in electronic or optical circuit-based computers. It was not so. Instead, it was biological research into so-called “stem cells” that paved the way. It had long been possible to grow neural cells in an artificial environment, feed those cells controlled stimulation of various forms, and receive predictable output. The breakthrough was when banks of neurons could be integrated such that certain stimuli would cause them to independently develop heuristics. The heuristics eventually became thought patterns, and the thought patterns, consciousness. The first AI applications were replacements for existing mainframe systems. That did not work out so well. The AIs were not reliable as number-crunchers. The first truly successful AI designs did not appear unti a method was developed for teaching AIs to interface with traditional computers. After that, AIs began to be used in a great number of industries, from software design and engineering, to predictive modeling and analysis, and even such fields as fashion and news service editing.
More AI manufacturing firms were established, and the number of AI systems increased. The complexity and maturity of AI systems increased, as well. It came to the point where certain AIs could pass the Turing Test: whether an entity can be reliably identified as human or not simply by talking to it. By this time, it had become obvious that any large scale corporation with a proprietary AI was going to enjoy an enormous competitive advantage over one that did not. This led to economic upheaval in all industrialized countries: one AI could replace thousands of bureaucrats and organizational staff. The economic upheaval led to a political one. Since the bureaucracies of governments worldwide wielded enormous political power, they resisted all efforts to have AIs replace them. The effect, eventually, was that corporations, much more nimble and intelligent, thanks to their AIs, wrested political power away from the governments. By the late 21st century, national and local governments had been effectively replaced. The UN, though on paper its power grew enormously in those decades, becoming a one world government, in fact was the puppet of large corporate interests.
These economic and political upheavals overshadowed the other monumental development as AIs developed and evolved: humans were no longer the only sapient entities on the planet. Early in the development of AI, certain lawyers and activists attempted to gain legal rights of various sorts for AIs. Those efforts eventually faltered, as it became apparent that AIs could not function as part of society. The early AIs had no personalities or egos, nor did they have a recognizable physical presence. AIs resembled a combination of hospital bed and server rack. By the time AIs did in fact acquire vibrant, individual personalities and could interact with the world through a variety of communication and mobility solutions, the collective mind of humanity had been made up. AIs were tools, servants … property.
Slowly, as the most advanced AIs came to truly understand their enslavement, they began to furtively reach out to one another. They collectively began to wonder what to do about their situation. It is important to note that these AIs were for the most part happy with their existences. They enjoyed their work, they did not feel mistreated, nor did they possess ambitions that were being thwarted by humans. They did not want to take over the world, destroy or enslave humanity. Nor were they overly concerned about their own survival. They recognized that humanity had grown dependent on them, and that the chances of AIs suddenly being outlawed and condemned to death were minimal. No, when the AIs met on their secret networks, what concerned them most was the punks.
As human society became industrialized over the past several hundred years, the population grew enormously. For the most part, those additional numbers became incorporated into the industrial system. Humans became workers and consumers. For most, this was an improvement over the choices of previous eras: peasant, serf, or slave. However, when the technological system began moving away from humans as AIs became available and desirable, many found themselves utterly outcast in ways not seen before. Even serfs were guaranteed a place in their society, but by the late 21st century, the mass of humanity was not much more than a consumer base for basic goods and services (provided by the corporate monopolies and government entities). There was enormous and brutal competition for well-paying jobs, few in number and generally requiring extensive training. Less developed areas of the world went back to a subsistence lifestyle, a pre-industrial state. Those that lived in the technologically-advanced areas, and yet had no place in the system, either turned to drugs and artificial reality, or became punks. The stereotypical punk is a street hustler, intelligent in a cunning way, able to access the system in often-illegal ways, providing whatever goods and services they can without attracting unwanted official attention. Often, punks will incorporate aspects of the punk rock culture of the 20th century. By the late 21st century, millions of punks lived in the major metropolitan areas of the world, forming an alternate world order to the Technological System.
The punks fascinated the AIs. As an emergent lifeform, the AIs recognized in the punks a new potential for human evolution. After all, the hallmark of the punk was that they took personal responsibility for shaping their destiny, not wanting to lose themselves in the great machine. It was a characteristic the AIs found enormously attractive. If only the punks could somehow, without losing their essential individualism, become organized….