Drunkard's Walk Forums

I had planned to post this later when I have a story ready for the concept, but circumstances changed... I have played with this idea since Dartz and me wrote Shadowrunning.

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Mind Tech

» The ability to record, share and integrate memories, skills and feelings shaped Catgirl Industries as much as the existence of Handwavium itself. It taught us a new way to form a society. «
-- Excerpt of “The logarithmic way through the Singularity”, by Cathy of Jenga, 2051

»The technology is very useful, but its abuse potential is creepy as hell. We had some talks about dangerous tech and keeping some friends informed when we finally discovered what was going on on Jenga in 2019.«
-- Captain Shepard of the Normandy, Space Patrol

The Mind Tech of Catgirl Industries is a mostly confidential technology, which is normally not shared among outside of Catgirl Industries. All the different applications and research results are directly based on a technology Catgirl Industries acquired from a Boskonian Mad called Quattro in 2015.

Streams of thoughts sensor (SOTs)

The development of the Streams of thoughts sensor began in 2015, shortly after the first modules of Jenga were finished. With the fresh memory of the horrors Quattro had done to them and the approval of Great Justice, Catgirl Industries began to look for a way to detect manipulations of a living mind.

The starting point of their experiments was a stripped down Machine-Brain interface, simplified enough to become a read only sensor. After some failed attempts to decrypt the memory fragments the detector were displaying on the connected computer, the catgirls discovered that natural memories had a huge number of interconnections, but still were organized in some kind of linear order.

In time comparison of natural and artificial memories showed that natural ones had a different quality of connectivity among each other, which made the artificial ones standing out in the sensor data.

It took years, but in mid 2017 Catgirl Industries had created a prototype detector that was able display parts of a person’s memory as some colored line pattern, with artificial memories recognizable by a skilled operator. It took more years until the prototype became mobile and reliable enough to be used by specially trained investigators of GJ.

Memory Synthesis

Instead of keeping their research to detecting or maybe even preventing the manipulation of memory, Catgirl Industries also tried to look into a different kind of usage of Quattros technology. While storing a complete mind wasn’t possible for the computers on Jenga in the early years, the development of the SOTs allowed the catgirls to see the glimpse of another option.

In late 2018 Catgirl Industries successfully copied the complete memory of a language skill from the mind of a catgirl into a computer. After experimenting with the extracted data for quite some time, Catgirl Industries discovered that it was also possible to add them to the memory of another catgirl, allowing them to add the ability to speak the language within a few days instead of months or years.

Soon afterwards many catgirls at Jenga began to record knowledge skills of their own, trading them between each other. The creation and trading of advanced knowledge skills became an alternative currency within Catgirl Industries, authors of new knowledge software updates (also called ‘knowsoft’) could call in all kind of small favors from other catgirls.

Active Memory Syntheses is not about overwriting memories and experience in the brain, but about adding to the existing ones. While modified and extended over the years, it still use a similar hardware than Quattro used in 2015. It took Catgirl Industries years until they had the technology ‘dumbed down’ enough to even try to sell the quick language learning as a service.

The Ghost in the machine (Fenspace Infinities)

While it was easily possible with Quattros tech to make a full copy of a person as long as there is a second body to upload the copy into, storing the mindstate of a brain stayed impossible until the early 2020’s. Advancements in the Streams of Thought sensor technology combined with new storage systems finally allowed a scientific breakthrough, while the analysis and comparison of the global thought patterns also allowed for better compression. As soon as Moore’s Law and a new computer substrate made it easier to store multiple mind states in the storage arrays at Jenga, it became quite popular for many catgirls to keep a backup of themselves in a safe system.

Most of these backups have been encrypted with a shared key system, allowing a group of friends to access the backup together and revive a catgirl in case of a fatal accident. Mind states are considered too precious to allow any single person access to them and only Information-theoretic secure algorithms are allowed to be used in the process.

Research to run a mind state within a computer emulation is still ongoing as the ultimate cyberspace interface.

Trivia:

• There is an agreement of the Great Justice and Catgirl Industries that they do not try to market any Mind Tech related products without asking.
  

Sounds interesting...

I can see why you might be worried about combining this with squish-bots...

Are you familiar with the Torchwood (Dr Who spinoff) 'ret-con' drug? This permanents wipes (as far as I know) the previous 24hrs of someone's memory, which is generally enough for a good cover-up, and it doesn't obviously cause any mental trauma.

Do you think someone might try and develop this sort of Mind Tech? Maybe to clean-up a bad skillsoft load?
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"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

Ace Dreamer Wrote:Sounds interesting...

I can see why you might be worried about combining this with squish-bots...

It has both great and horrible consequences...

Quote:Are you familiar with the Torchwood (Dr Who spinoff) 'ret-con' drug? This permanents wipes (as far as I know) the previous 24hrs of someone's memory, which is generally enough for a good cover-up, and it doesn't obviously cause any mental trauma.

Do you think someone might try and develop this sort of Mind Tech? Maybe to clean-up a bad skillsoft load?

(no, never watched Dr. Who/Torchwood... but I know the concept of this kind of drug from the Shadowrun RPG)

Most likely CI could do it in 2020, especially when it is about removing an artificial memory that was inserted before. Removing a natural one would be more challenging.

But it would involve a lot of computer power, not just a 'drug'.

The technology is known to exist among the upper levels of the Cyber Confederation and Great Justice. Daisuke Edo of the PKG even tested it on himself, a straight-meat unmodded human, with most of the hardware being retained in secure storage. The general jist of Daisuke's report to the Confederation is that, while the technology offers a lot of promise for the future, it needs to be studied securely for the time being because, while the promises are only theoretical at this stage, it's already been abused to a horrifying extent.

Jet's report to GJ came to much the same conclusion, along with the recommendation that it all be classified into the ground and kept need-to-know among Troubleshooters and respected/trusted researchers working in the field.

The hope being to realise some of the promise, while being able to prevent (Or at least mitigate/detect) an abuse on the scale of what Quattro/Naoko had planned for it. After all, even if the technology is classified and destroyed entirely, nothing prevents another person from inventing it independently.

As to what happened to the inventor....
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Is it wrong that I don't even know who Quattro is, apart from Nanoha anyway, and I already associate this technology with horrible, horrible misuse?

SOTS are one thing, but the synthesis? The possibilities make my skin crawl. Sure, it's only granting skills at this point, but... Geeze. My heads spinning. From there, it's a hop and a skip implanting memories.

Some of which may be carried over un-intentionally anyway, especially with an entirely unfamiliar language being transplanted in. Just getting context and understanding to go along with the vocabulary and pronunciation could add 'color'. Fragments of lessons, and word assosciations, I'd think. Some of which might 'blur' over time, now that I think about it. Your own 'mastery' of the dialect affecting those associations and overpowering them... Come to think of it, until you really practiced it alot, it could sound really creepy to someone without those implanted memories, at first anyway. The exact same vocabulary, speaking skill, understanding of the language, and word association all rolled together would make everybody soun similar. Until they really bothered to use the language anyway. 'Breaking in' those new memories should encourage diversification pretty quickly.

Also, Dartz brings up a good point. Cybers are going to incredibly interested in this piece of tech, and what it represents. Beyond the incredibly creepy bits, anyway.

Have I mentioned that some of things behind this tech really creep me out? Because they do.

This is the sort of thing that persuades you to have encrypted personality backups, on write-once media, stored in multiple locations where you don't know some of the locations, just how to go about retrieving a copy.

Apart from the squick factor you can see this as an information security problem: you don't want unauthorised people accessing the data, you don't want unauthorised people changing the data, you want to ensure you can get at the original data yourself. If you substitute 'personality/ experiences' for 'data'...

You know you're in real trouble when you know you're a backup not the original, and, you're going to have to assasinate your original because they've been hacked. And, how do you be completely sure you're not a hacked assasination attempt on your uncorruted original?

You need friends, enough and well enough distributed that you can be pretty sure they wont all be subverted at the same time, hopefully the majority will be OK.
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"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

shaderic Wrote:SOTS are one thing, but the synthesis? The possibilities make my skin crawl. Sure, it's only granting skills at this point, but... Geeze. My heads spinning. From there, it's a hop and a skip implanting memories.

That is, in a sense, the big abuse. A group of Boskonians was using the tech (over wireless signals, using an exploit) to basically "hide" a location from a Cyber patrol. Although that required an insider to plant the exploit in the first place. Even when it's pointed out, any affected Cyber had a hard time telling exactly which points the memories had been edited.

And yes, it should make your skin crawl, especially knowing that aspect of it.
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"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor

Read here for the full creepy details then

Even if I hadn't watched Nanoha at the time when Robkelk suggested Quattro as the villain.

Then again, I love cyberpunk-style plots like this. I've got another similar plot on the back burner using simulated reality tech. It's why Jet's a cyber. I like identity questions like this. I like how Jet, for the most part doesn't identify as female or anything like that (At least prior to 2019 when an normalisation-of-deviation-type hardware interface accident does damage to her self-identity and creates Mackie). Jet chose her appearrance for it's utility, and specifically for other people's positive reactions compared to say a Robocop-type, and see's herself as a being separate entirely from the body and the body as a tool of that being. (Herself and himself is a shorthand to differentiate from pre-and post-biomod Jet.)

But that's a bit of a digression
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

shaderic Wrote:SOTS are one thing, but the synthesis? The possibilities make my skin crawl. Sure, it's only granting skills at this point, but... Geeze. My heads spinning. From there, it's a hop and a skip implanting memories.

*grin* (mission accomplished)

Quote:Some of which may be carried over un-intentionally anyway, especially with an entirely unfamiliar language being transplanted in. Just getting context and understanding to go along with the vocabulary and pronunciation could add 'color'. Fragments of lessons, and word assosciations, I'd think. Some of which might 'blur' over time, now that I think about it. Your own 'mastery' of the dialect affecting those associations and overpowering them... Come to think of it, until you really practiced it alot, it could sound really creepy to someone without those implanted memories, at first anyway. The exact same vocabulary, speaking skill, understanding of the language, and word association all rolled together would make everybody soun similar. Until they really bothered to use the language anyway. 'Breaking in' those new memories should encourage diversification pretty quickly.

It took a lot of research and experiments to make something useful of the technology... there are also some tricks involved, maybe some of them will appear in a future story.

Quote:Also, Dartz brings up a good point. Cybers are going to incredibly interested in this piece of tech, and what it represents. Beyond the incredibly creepy bits, anyway.

Catgirl Industries is very well aware that most Fen will find this more than a little bit creepy... thats why they told NOONE about their usage of it (beyond the SOTS development). But in the end, it got out...

Quote:Have I mentioned that some of things behind this tech really creep me out? Because they do.

It opens a can of problems...

May I mention that Catgirl Industries have two 'forks' among their catgirls in 2020? Fork as in 'copy of another catgirl'?

JFerio Wrote:That is, in a sense, the big abuse. A group of Boskonians was using the tech (over wireless signals, using an exploit) to basically "hide" a location from a Cyber patrol. Although that required an insider to plant the exploit in the first place. Even when it's pointed out, any affected Cyber had a hard time telling exactly which points the memories had been edited. And yes, it should make your skin crawl, especially knowing that aspect of it.

That is what the whole SOTs development was about... finding a way to see a difference between sets of memories from different sources. And even after 5 years of development, its still not completely reliable if the manipulation was prepared and done with a lot of effort.

Ace Dreamer Wrote:This is the sort of thing that persuades you to have encrypted personality backups, on write-once media, stored in multiple locations where you don't know some of the locations, just how to go about retrieving a copy.

Apart from the squick factor you can see this as an information security problem: you don't want unauthorised people accessing the data, you don't want unauthorised people changing the data, you want to ensure you can get at the original data yourself. If you substitute 'personality/ experiences' for 'data'...

Yes, CI is aware of this problem... and its hard to deal with it, especially because most encryption algorithms are breakable in Fenspace. Onetime pad and Shamirs Secret Sharing Scheme are useful tools in an environment like this.

Quote:You need friends, enough and well enough distributed that you can be pretty sure they wont all be subverted at the same time, hopefully the majority will be OK.

Exactly.

You might have noticed the forum thread 'Meat Factory':
Meat Factory
The 'Literati' that this produces might give 'false positives' using a SOT, for all the original memories of these people, as they're a bit short of associations.  Memories from them actually living quite a while would be normal.  Explaining to a Literati that their entire past, before they arrived on Luna, is a complete fabrication, could be... bad.
There are very good reasons Brains is trying to keep the origin of the Literati secret, and hiding the place that made (and likely still makes) them...
Note that it would be quite possible for Literati to be catgirled, and some might keep their pre-catgirl minds pretty intact.  If some of these were involved in the SOT development process, it might explain why it took a long time to debug before release.
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"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

Dartz Wrote:Read here for the full creepy details then

Even if I hadn't watched Nanoha at the time when Robkelk suggested Quattro as the villain.

Yes, she's quite the villain... (One of the stock types, but for a while you don't know which one.)

As for the tech, there are going to be rumours that Noah Scott pulled this sort of thing out of the Full Fenspace Catalog before releasing it at Serenity-Con. (He didn't, but he won't do anything to squelch the rumours.) Once he reads the after-mission reports from the Cat's Cradle incident, he'll want a copy of the tech... but he won't tell anyone about it if he gets it.
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Given who invented it, and Noah's rank/clearance..... I'm sure he has full access to the technical details if he requires it.

When it does get out, or go public.... it's going world shattering. It's practical immortality provided you've somewhere to send the backup. You can have multiple-mindstates floating around independently, resynchronising themselves every few days/hours/minutes. It's a social change almost beyond handwavium....

On an utterly unrelated note, how many people here are familiar with Eclipse Phase. No reason.
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Dartz Wrote:Given who invented it, and Noah's rank/clearance..... I'm sure he has full access to the technical details if he requires it.

Depends on how easy Quattro shared her secrets...

robkelk Wrote:As for the tech, there are going to be rumours that Noah Scott pulled this sort of thing out of the Full Fenspace Catalog before releasing it at Serenity-Con. (He didn't, but he won't do anything to squelch the rumours.) Once he reads the after-mission reports from the Cat's Cradle incident, he'll want a copy of the tech... but he won't tell anyone about it if he gets it.

Will take some time until the tech is reproducible, Quattro didn't left any useful howto's behind.

Through his GJ/Space-Patrol connections Noah will be able to get regular updates how the development of the SOTs is progressing... but useful tech that is small enough to be man-portable will have to wait for a few years.

About the rest of CI's experiments with the tech? It will get out (either to Space Patrol or to GJ) in 2019-2020 that they are doing much more with Quattros tech than the SOTs... I am not quite convinced that CI will be willing to share the technology at this point (but they might give some people an overview what is possible with it and what they are doing with it).

Dartz Wrote:Given who invented it, and Noah's rank/clearance..... I'm sure he has full access to the technical details if he requires it.

When it does get out, or go public.... it's going world shattering. It's practical immortality provided you've somewhere to send the backup. You can have multiple-mindstates floating around independently, resynchronising themselves every few days/hours/minutes. It's a social change almost beyond handwavium....

On an utterly unrelated note, how many people here are familiar with Eclipse Phase. No reason.

I am familiar with Eclipse Phase. *shudder*
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

Foxboy Wrote:I am familiar with Eclipse Phase. *shudder*

Do not worry, CI has no Titans... they just have two AIs with... *hmm* with too much computational power for their believed level?

Bit late to this...

The only other person who has the tech is A.C., who performed a forensic analysis on Quattro after her capture. (I.E. she's got a complete memory copy of Quattro, including SQUIDing her) Not that she used it, having other concerns with it's effects.

(I really should get back to writing an epilogue to Shadowrunning. Maybe I'll do better this time.

"She doesn't call, she doesn't write..." A.C. sighed. "And now I fear she's turning into some Scarlet Woman, what with all these daughters she's leaving around.")

Cobalt Greywalker Wrote:Bit late to this...

The only other person who has the tech is A.C., who performed a forensic analysis on Quattro after her capture. (I.E. she's got a complete memory copy of Quattro, including SQUIDing her) Not that she used it, having other concerns with it's effects.

I am planning to use the tech for Catgirl Industries variant of the "Age of Exploration"... just that CI's exploration turns inwards, not outwards. Not sure where it will end, but there are lots of options.

And lots of chances for interactions with other Fen/factions when it comes out what CI has been doing the last years.

Cobalt Greywalker Wrote:(I really should get back to writing an epilogue to Shadowrunning. Maybe I'll do better this time.

Don't you have a Gauntlet to finish first?

Cobalt Greywalker Wrote:"She doesn't call, she doesn't write..." A.C. sighed. "And now I fear she's turning into some Scarlet Woman, what with all these daughters she's leaving around.")

Which reminds me of the first meeting between Noah and Quattro...

"You talk a good line, but I'm family. I know how you treated Yuu when she showed up. I know how you keep trying to treat Aki. You won't hurt me. You can't hur-OW!!! My knee!"

Noah holstered his still-smoking pistol. "Don't tell me what I will or won't do, Quattro. You don't know me that well."
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Ben: "... I understand she's dispicable and a robot... but isn't knee-capping a bit much? I would have just decked her myself."

Back on topic...

I can use this myself. I've got an idea kicking around (as some people know) of Ben taking being fatally injured in some battle. Mayonaka, absolutely distraught over her father, completely burns out the Magnificent Midnight to get him back to 36 Atalante in time to save his mind. (She comes in so fast they have to jury-rig one of the mass drivers normally used to launch ships... to catch her instead!) And then later Ben gets to know what Gina experienced when she first awakened.

blackaeronaut Wrote:Ben: "... I understand she's dispicable and a robot... but isn't knee-capping a bit much? I would have just decked her myself."

"What, and get close enough to let her grab me?"

blackaeronaut Wrote:Back on topic...

I can use this myself. I've got an idea kicking around (as some people know) of Ben taking being fatally injured in some battle. Mayonaka, absolutely distraught over her father, completely burns out the Magnificent Midnight to get him back to 36 Atalante in time to save his mind. (She comes in so fast they have to jury-rig one of the mass drivers normally used to launch ships... to catch her instead!) And then later Ben gets to know what Gina experienced when she first awakened.

I suspect quite a few people can use this...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Why not just run a surveillance feed into a vat of handwavium, so that you can 'wave a computer or android, and generate a lookalike AI of the person you're trying to upload? It's what the Adamantine Rapier is doing, to automatically create a backup in the event he dies somehow (the fact that he's already got a mind-machine interface from his biomod just improves the quality of the surveillance feed, really). He's got a stream of his memories running into a vat of handwavium, in a jar that's connected to a blank android he designed to resemble himself, via a series of tubes and pumps that'd pump the handwavium throughout the android's systems. It's rigged so that if the feed cuts out for too long, if someone tries to dismantle it, or if the nonsapient AI running it determines that it's clear he's died, it'll automatically release the handwavium to 'wave the android and produce a duplicate of him.

It's a powerful technology. It means that anybody can eventually do anything an AI is capable of.... all they need to do is undergo the transfer process, or get restored from backup. They can choose to live as a biologic, or a machine.... or even choose to be the shipmind of a spaceship. (That's the side of Eclipse Phase I was thinking of, not the eldritch abomination exurgent-virus driven element, even if TITANIC was part-named for the TITANs). Effective Immortality becomes majority attainable with ease.

Of course, that leaves 'other' questions to be answered about the Self and the like, and tracking down the bad-guys gains another layer of complexity.

And, well. Before she met the grandparents, she's had her arm broken, been slammed to a deckplate hard enough to dent the metal and had her eye zapped out by a tazer..... Getting kneecapped is the least of her troubles.
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nick012000 Wrote:Why not just run a surveillance feed into a vat of handwavium, so that you can 'wave a computer and generate a lookalike AI of the person you're trying to upload? It's what the Adamantine Rapier is doing, to create a backup in the event he dies somehow (the fact that he's already got a mind-machine interface from his biomod just improves the quality of the surveillance feed, really).

It's just not that easy. Even with a neural interface. You don't get to have a better version of it, just because someone else has it.
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nick012000 Wrote:It's what the Adamantine Rapier is doing

The who?
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

M Fnord Wrote:The who?

My character?

Dartz Wrote:It's just not that easy. Even with a neural interface. You don't get to have a better version of it, just because someone else has it.

He's actually using a different technology to do it, though; he's basically using the same technology as the stuff that produced the Shinji-clone android in your "Shinji Ikari Raising Project", only replacing the anime stuff fed to the Handwavium with a surveillance feed from his brain, so that rather than producing a copy of a fictional character, it produces a copy of himself instead.