<story><title>William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/810570879/william-gibson-says-todays-internet-is-nothing-like-what-he-envisioned</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Nasrudith</author><text>There were also gameplay reasons behind that for flow. One of the criticisms of the newer model is that the needless connectivity without so much as a logistical benefit doesn&amp;#x27;t make the decker&amp;#x2F;hacker feel smart so much as make it feel like the world is set up by colossal idiots who would think giving the army hand grenades which are always remote detonatable without a manual safety fuse would be an excellent idea and be utterly shocked that their entire army got blown up by one hacker.</text></item><item><author>mcv</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;the internet when he first conceived it, he thought it was a place that we would all leave the world and go to. Whereas in fact, it came here.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Somehow this reminds me of the difference between various editions of &lt;i&gt;Shadowrun&lt;/i&gt;, a cyberpunk-fantasy rolepalying game in a dystopian near future where magic and dragons returned (though the magic is irrelevant to my point here).&lt;p&gt;In the earlier editions, from 1989 through the 1990s and early 2000s, the Matrix (their &amp;#x27;internet&amp;#x27;) was all virtual reality, and the &amp;#x27;Decker&amp;#x27; using it would disappear into that world and barely interact with the rest of the team.&lt;p&gt;In more recent editions, written after smartphones and wireless internet became common, &lt;i&gt;everything&lt;/i&gt; was connected. Everything is connected to the Matrix. In combat, a Decker can hack the opponents&amp;#x27; guns to disable them, for example. It&amp;#x27;s not a world to disappear into; that world has come to the physical world and merged with it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>naravara</author><text>I think this was done as much for gameplay flow as anything else. The main criticism of the older model was that you had to manage combat in 3 separate, and only mildly overlapping, planes which made combat a time-consuming pain to track. Lots of playgroups would discourage people from playing deckers or mages just so they wouldn&amp;#x27;t have to deal with astral plane&amp;#x2F;matrix stuff.</text></comment>
<story><title>William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/810570879/william-gibson-says-todays-internet-is-nothing-like-what-he-envisioned</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Nasrudith</author><text>There were also gameplay reasons behind that for flow. One of the criticisms of the newer model is that the needless connectivity without so much as a logistical benefit doesn&amp;#x27;t make the decker&amp;#x2F;hacker feel smart so much as make it feel like the world is set up by colossal idiots who would think giving the army hand grenades which are always remote detonatable without a manual safety fuse would be an excellent idea and be utterly shocked that their entire army got blown up by one hacker.</text></item><item><author>mcv</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;the internet when he first conceived it, he thought it was a place that we would all leave the world and go to. Whereas in fact, it came here.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Somehow this reminds me of the difference between various editions of &lt;i&gt;Shadowrun&lt;/i&gt;, a cyberpunk-fantasy rolepalying game in a dystopian near future where magic and dragons returned (though the magic is irrelevant to my point here).&lt;p&gt;In the earlier editions, from 1989 through the 1990s and early 2000s, the Matrix (their &amp;#x27;internet&amp;#x27;) was all virtual reality, and the &amp;#x27;Decker&amp;#x27; using it would disappear into that world and barely interact with the rest of the team.&lt;p&gt;In more recent editions, written after smartphones and wireless internet became common, &lt;i&gt;everything&lt;/i&gt; was connected. Everything is connected to the Matrix. In combat, a Decker can hack the opponents&amp;#x27; guns to disable them, for example. It&amp;#x27;s not a world to disappear into; that world has come to the physical world and merged with it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ses1984</author><text>Whoever paid for that grenade doesn&amp;#x27;t trust the soldier &amp;#x2F; mercenary they gave it to very far, that&amp;#x27;s why the network connection exists in the first place, hackers can exploit that.&lt;p&gt;At least that&amp;#x27;s the reason I just made up.</text></comment>