The ability to collect data is undeniable. The ability to process all that data is the big issue in technology currently. AI might change that if you can get it to the level of "look for any information on the guys that busted in here yesterday" and it understands what you mean. Currently the NSA requires man years of effort to find useful patterns on enemies of the state. Even net runners would get bored sifting through all that data. An AI might never get board.

Conversely, if such an AI is available, who developed it? Hackers? A government? A Mega Corp? Are they available to small players? How much processing power would they require? How much processing power could they ultimately expand into?

If small actors could obtain and operate one, it may be able to do things like cover your tracks or even edit you out of a video feed much the way you can change the background of a video feed these days. Even better, just blur your face, or put a laughing man stamp over it. (Although they could get your hight and build then.)

A net runner would almost never use their own credentials to buy anything. Heck, why even use your own money to buy things if your a decent hacker on the wrong side of the law? It would be confusing for a game, but in a hyper connected society, shady operators would probably not use the same names twice and NEVER use their real names.

In reality, this shadow economy and the means to avoid detection already exist. Effective biometric scanning would probably be the main thing that changes that, which would again require an advanced AI.

Another thing that could wild west it up is interplanetary flight without an FTL communication system. Okay this is more traditional Sci-Fi than strictly cyberpunk at this point, just pointing out useful game space. If there isn't a way of networking planets together, (or on a smaller scale, if governments started walling off the internet for some reason) then you could disappear into another system, change your identity and start a new life. Yes your old life would eventually get to the system, but if you covered your tracks well enough and no one wants you badly enough, you might just pull off the switch.

I imagine false fronts, such as a make-believe family, would be common. The "family" owns the home, buys the groceries, buys the tables and toilets, and the Shadowrunner lives there secretly. There's also the hidden-in-plain sight aspect. A rich Shadowrunner could live in the same luxury walled suburb as Corporate Executives who - like runners - would value their privacy. Maybe even living in un-wired communes?

Quote from: daniel_ream;915883I feel I should point out that "big corporations run everything and are totalitarian fascists" is not actually a common trope of cyberpunk literature.  It's not entirely an invention of cyberpunk RPGs (remember, Shadowrun was written by a couple of Seattle anti-corporate anarchist types); it's explicitly there in Walter Jon Williams' books and Bruce Sterling injects a little of it, but it's incorrect to say that it's a general trope.  It's not there in any of Gibson's Sprawl Series, for instance.

I would agree with the "totalitarian fascist" part. But I would disagree that the corporate dominance of the world at large isn't a cyberpunk-trope. It totally is. Even in the Sprawl - Gibson isn't beating you over head telling it to you - he's showing it to you. The conventions of cyberpunk are that of corporatism gone-wild (to whatever degree justifies the circumstances of the setting) while humanity at large is weathering under the technoshock and grind of everyday existence in their shadow. What Gibson doesn't do is march the Corps out there as these overt antagonists. Instead they're the ubiquitous environment itself - swallowing humanity rendering us into useful gut-bacteria in its bowels.

Where do you think all this nifty life-absorbing tech comes from? That's why everything has a brand and model. Gibson's stories are about what character's do in spite of the oily corporate stew they live in, because frankly it doesn't matter at this point but if only to justify the circumstances. To the degree that they "run everything" - well I suppose it depends on your perspective.

Cyberpunk 2020 handled it pretty well. They made special care to show the US Government (and to a greater extent, European and Asian governments as well) would act in their own interests above and beyond the Mega-Corps if necessary. See the 'Mageddon Incident'.

Quote from: tenbones;916254Cyberpunk 2020 handled it pretty well. They made special care to show the US Government (and to a greater extent, European and Asian governments as well) would act in their own interests above and beyond the Mega-Corps if necessary. See the 'Mageddon Incident'.

I think the key realisation is that megacorps are run by people and that these people are from the same elite that also runs the government. They come from the same social class, they vacation in the same places, invest in the same things, their children go to the same schools you end up with a situation where the decisions they take, whether on behalf of the megacorp or on behalf of the government as also for the benefit of the elite.

Or more simple it's so much the megacorps that control the government (or vice versa) it's the elite that control both.

Good thing we don't live in a cyberpunk world. That would suck.

Quote from: Soylent Green;916259Good thing we don't live in a cyberpunk world. That would suck.

They circumvented that by not requiring office workers to wear suits. And not inventing cybernetics.

Quote from: tenbones;916254But I would disagree that the corporate dominance of the world at large isn't a cyberpunk-trope. It totally is. Even in the Sprawl - Gibson isn't beating you over head telling it to you - he's showing it to you.

No, I'm sorry, that isn't true.  I think you're starting with the assumption that it is and then looking for support, however thin, in the original works. The only Gibson work that even deals with corporations is Turner's subplot in Count Zero Interrupt.  Corporations are not depicted as any more pervasive, influential or powerful than national governments, extremely wealthy families, or rogue AIs.

And there are entire author's works - like George Alec Effinger - where you'd be hard pressed to find any reference to corporations, let alone transnational entities powerful enough to threaten governments.  That's largely an invention of RPGs.