We're talking about Eclipse Phase's past, Cyberpunk 2020 and how that could be all used into a single campaign on that thread. (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=26377)
Another question I find interesting would be, assuming the Eclipse Phase time frame is not the actual end point, that this isn't the extinction of the human race, or whatever it would have become after that, how do you see the future after Eclipse Phase? What happens next?
What would transhumanity look like in the future, if it survived the threats immediately following the Fall say, 100, 200, 500 years into the future? If you ran a campaign like this, positing Eclipse Phase as "the past", what would your game, characters, universe look like? Tell me how you see the EP universe evolve in the near and far future.
The big thing you need to look at is generational continuance, reproduction.
The overwhelming majority of humans in the setting are not actually wearing their original bodies and one core playable archetype is a survivor of a failed attempt to create a new generation of humans artificially.
How do synthetic morphs procreate? What does the next generation of 'people' look like? Do we design synthetic personas that are meant to grow into fully realized people using a process akin to childhood?
EP doesn't really answer this. The presented society is functionally broken, a last doomed generation before the end. One with a really, really long time to stare down the barrel of oblivion, but there.
This is where EP goes, this is the big question that needs to be solved in order for Humanity to move forward. How do technological immortals who have left the shackles of biology continue on? How do they grow and spread and change? How long can you keep recycling stored personalities, and how suitable are purely synthetic personalities as our 'children'?
The players can be deeply involved in these pressing questions, or the GM can answer them. The Game itself, however, doesn't even seem to acknowledge the problem exists...
Humanity spreads through the stars using Gates, colonizing far-off worlds and making contact with new, weird alien species.
In the short- to mid-term, assuming no FTL, the future consists of human colonies linked together by Gates, a lot like Diaspora.
Between evolutionary drifts and new contacts, in a long enough time frame, Earth becomes a distant memory and the resulting galactic civilization is indistinguishable from Star Wars.
Aeons later, the creators of the Exsurgent virus show up and they're the Yuuzhan Vong.
:D
Quote from: Spike;649953EP doesn't really answer this. The presented society is functionally broken, a last doomed generation before the end. One with a really, really long time to stare down the barrel of oblivion, but there.
That's a stirring image which sounds fairly accurate. The ultimate sterility of the concept sort of gets overlooked by a lot of its proponents.
A group of PCs who know that this is the last, doomed generation would be interesting. The campaign would be about how to save the future of the human race in a world where nobody else wants to consider the truth.
Almost a Children of Men feel to the campaign, especially if you play up the idea of how glitches keep showing up in recycled personalities and more and more imperfections are arising in synthetic morphs. Also, you get to play up the inhuman-ness of "people" who have spent too much time outside their biology. On the outside, everything is shimmering perfection, but the system is failing within.
In my view, the future of EP is a certain segment become the Mechanoids. AKA, they get aboard generational starships and set off for the next galaxy, but by the time they arrive, the flaws in transhuman society have consumed their last vestiges humanity and sanity.
I totally agree that there is not nearly enough written about if and how the various types of biomorphs can have children, but you can put together a picture from comments in various books (well, Panopticon, mostly...): I'd say that many Splicers, Exalts, Olympians, Mentons, Bouncers, Hibernoids, Rusters and Alpiners were born that way, maybe through a "genetic upgrade template" applied to the embryo or because of their parentage.
Now, it's mentioned in Panopticon that Uplifts have to acquire a licence from the corp who has developed their morph if they want to have a child. Basically, it's a DRM scheme, and I assume it works in the same or similar way with humanoid biomorphs.
There is also the Ayah, a nanny / caretaker pod described in the Transhuman playtest, so even the writers themselves seem to assume that there are still children in the future.
Finally, think about the weird stuff like forking or AGIs creating "children" by randomizing parts of their own source code! I strongly suggest Hannu Rajaniemi's truly excellent novel The Quantum Thief (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief) (copyclans, anyone?)!
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/79/Altered_Carbon_cover_1_%28Amazon%29.jpg)
EP's heavily based on this anyway, except with some horror elements added.
Quote from: Spike;649953...
EP doesn't really answer this.
The presented society is functionally broken, a last doomed generation before the end. One with a really, really long time to stare down the barrel of oblivion, but there.
...
I don't agree with this. In EP, humanity has the ability to create whole people with synthetic brains from scratch. There are thousands of infomorphs looking for bodies. You can combine the DNA of two people together and clone a perfect child without any defects AND add new improved traits as you see fit (and can afford). They mention in the book that "splices", genetically modified "normal" humans are still a majority. There would be no infant mortality rate or birth defects. The population is limited by space and material resources. Once the newer habitats are finished growing, there will be living space for 1 - 3 million new people. As long as the exsurgent threat is contained, and no new alien menace rears its head, and the remaining humans don't exterminate each other with the myriad means they now have, humanity could grow and prosper in the solar system without much trouble at all. It just takes time to grow new habitats or found new colonies. With an effective immortality, humanity has time.
To the future:I think the Pandora Gates really foreshadow the potential future for the setting. Once humanity learns to control the the gates, a form of interstellar travel is born. New habitable planets are discovered and colonies become nations in the billions. Perhaps new species and civilizations are discovered and humans agree to some sort of "concord" against true A.I and other "forbidden" technologies, opening up trade and discourse with a wider galaxy. The size and scope of the universe means a constant focus on exploration and discovery, and with immortal lifespans people can take a few decades off here and there to explore themselves (art, music, etc.). I think with the ability to create any body you need to adapt to any environment possible, humans become the "doppleganger" species spreading like wildfire across the galaxy.
I could see whole ships built to house millions of infomorphs, shot out towards a habitable planet taking 100+ years to reach that solar system. On it's way in, it stops by a gas giant and locates several asteroids to gather required resources to establish a colony. Once it arrives, it sends probes to the planet, mapping all lifeforms, geography, etc. It synthesizes the appropriate immunities and adaptations to live on the planet. Then the ship grows the infomorph passengers bodies and the work begins to establish the colony. A few months later you have a thriving city and the foundations of a new home. If humans have learned how to build Pandora Gates, they just build a gate station in the middle of the city and open up the new colony for trade.
Of course, some alien civilizations may be alarmed at the ability of humans to take on needed new forms and adapt to any environment, seeing us like a virus that will someday cover the galaxy...
Quote from: trechriron;650402Of course, some alien civilizations may be alarmed at the ability of humans to take on needed new forms and adapt to any environment, seeing us like a virus that will someday cover the galaxy...
Why wouldn't they have their own form of transhumanism?
Quote from: trechriron;650402I don't agree with this.
Fair enough. If you don't mind, however, I'm going to explain... not how you are wrong, but how we are not looking at the same evidence the same way.
QuoteIn EP, humanity has the ability to create whole people with synthetic brains from scratch.
I addressed the existance of synthmorphs in my original post, though I was keeping it short. I don't believe synthmorphs are meant to be human. People, perhaps, but not human. A long term look at the EP society where synthmorphs replace organic humans is still an extinction event, one were we are merely supplanted by our creations.
I also hold that, as they exist in EP, they would be inferior copies of humanity. This is neither supported nor rejected by the rules, but simply my philosophical belief: First or second generation artifical personality programs will simply be inferior to a complex, fully realized human mind. It doesn't have to be in ways that are reflected in rules, or even in day to day interactions. YMMV, etc.
QuoteThere are thousands of infomorphs looking for bodies.
Millions, perhaps billions, but yes. Also: A finite resource. Those human informorphs will not be in natural organic bodies, but artifical morphs of one sort or another, which merely reflects the lengh of the barrel of extinction they are staring down. We haven't even started talking about data corruption and loss yet...
QuoteYou can combine the DNA of two people together and clone a perfect child without any defects AND add new improved traits as you see fit (and can afford).
This is actually discussed in the book via the Futuras and was a spectacular failure. EP explicitely shows that trying to build a new transhuman from the ground up, like a machine, results in murderous psychosis and sociopathy for some 99% of all subjects.
That is part of the horror of the setting, you know.
QuoteThey mention in the book that "splices", genetically modified "normal" humans are still a majority.
There are two reasons why people would remain mere splices, which are literally only 80% as capable as the average morph: 'religious' reasons and cost. I put religious in quotes because I don't mean necessarily a codified faith structure. If you have some vague (dr mccoy style) concept that being killed and copied into a new body is literal death, you have a religous objection to resleeving. However, both eventual organic death of all splicers (who may cease their objections once a natural death has occured, and move on to better sleeves), and cultural erosion of such objections will eventually reduce such splicers to a minimal amount, probably within one extended human lifespan (so... one hundred years or so since the rise of sleeving as a regular activity).
THe only reason why the rest of the Splicers remain mere splicers is money. No one wants to be 20% stupider and weaker than everyone else. And as technology matures, it becomes cheaper and more affordable. In the real world, only 50 years ago air conditioning was a luxury only the very rich could afford, now its so ubiquitious that its almost impossible to buy a car that lacks it, much less a house (exceptions of course for regional differences: I know damn few people in the pacific northwest have air conditioning, because the average temperature is too low to need it...).
So, demographically, the Splicers are dying out, regardless of wether or not they are in the majority now. Once they are gone, then what?
QuoteThere would be no infant mortality rate or birth defects.
Agreed. Because there are no, or damn few, children. Again: The Futura Morph project more or less establishes as canon the fact that modern morphs aren't, possibly can't, simply breed like people do. Without the Futura Morph project I'd argue it could go either way. Your children won't inherit your genes, but they will inherit your morph, and that would be fine. Or morphs are of such a nature that they simply don't have children, and are essentially sterile.
The Futura project suggests the later is the default.
Yes, I keep hammering this one point, because it is illustrative that the setting, and thus (a) writer at least must have considered this. We are told, by the book, that there is a children crunch, and this effort to fix it failed disasterously.
QuoteThe population is limited by space and material resources.
Nonsense. That's just bad science. The setting puts colonies on mars, the moon and even Venus, not to mention relatively fast space ships and massive space stations. Humanity, in the setting of EP, occupies a far greater amount of 'land' than all of earth. As far as material resources, how so? THe vast majority of minerals mined on earth are presumed to come from asteroidal impacts, with the rest coming from mantle flows (lava, volcanic eruptions). THe crust of a planet holds damn few heavy metals, being mostly oxygen and silica (the oxygen thing surprised me, when I learned it, let it sink in for a moment...).
So for metals you have the asteroid belt, plus any potential gravity well mining from Mars and Luna. For lighter elements, well first they are of greater abundance in general, and as the jovian moons are not out of reach, a large amount of various organic soups can be 'mined' on places like Io just fine.
What, exactly, is lacking then?
I don't blame you for saying that. The book repeats it often enough, but in this the book is wrong. Not politically wrong, just factually wrong. EP's society is technologically advanced enough that they aren't going to lack resources in space. Not our solar system, certainly.
Quote from: Spike;650440Nonsense. That's just bad science. The setting puts colonies on mars, the moon and even Venus, not to mention relatively fast space ships and massive space stations. Humanity, in the setting of EP, occupies a far greater amount of 'land' than all of earth. As far as material resources, how so? THe vast majority of minerals mined on earth are presumed to come from asteroidal impacts, with the rest coming from mantle flows (lava, volcanic eruptions). THe crust of a planet holds damn few heavy metals, being mostly oxygen and silica (the oxygen thing surprised me, when I learned it, let it sink in for a moment...).
So for metals you have the asteroid belt, plus any potential gravity well mining from Mars and Luna. For lighter elements, well first they are of greater abundance in general, and as the jovian moons are not out of reach, a large amount of various organic soups can be 'mined' on places like Io just fine.
What, exactly, is lacking then?
I don't blame you for saying that. The book repeats it often enough, but in this the book is wrong. Not politically wrong, just factually wrong. EP's society is technologically advanced enough that they aren't going to lack resources in space. Not our solar system, certainly.
Actually trechriron is correct.
As far as humanity remembers, the appetite always grew during eating, to speak metaphorically. As soon as better forms of energy and technology were invented, the consumption for that technology also raised, and with an astonishing rate. I do not remember exactly and I do not want to lie, but I believe nowadays we double our energy consumption every decade. Or every year. I'm unsure. So if we colonise three planets, we'll just consume more. Humanity, in large, is a never satisfied ever - hungry maw.
I'm just going to clip and respond to specific parts.
Quote from: Spike;650440I addressed the existance of synthmorphs in my original post...
Not talking about synthmorphs. In EP, a synthmorph is artificial. It's made of plastics, et al. I was talking about biomorphs. In EP, you can create a whole biological human being from scratch. Some can have regular brains and be cloned from scratch (sperm + egg + tank + gene slicing) or they can have synth brains primed for infomorph uploading.
Quote from: Spike;650440I don't believe synthmorphs are meant to be human. ... I also hold that, as they exist in EP, they would be inferior copies of humanity...
That's not how it's seen in EP. An infomorph is generally regarded as a full functioning person. In some places (Jovian Junta) they're not, but for the most part your ego = humanity. A biological copy of your body is not inferior. In fact, with modifications I can keep upgrading to new bodies that in every way are superior. A person in a synthmorph may not be regarded as human by rich elites and Jovian hard-liners, but they are very much a human in a tin can. In EP, if you have an ego you are "human", actually Transhuman to be specific.
Quote from: Spike;650440First or second generation artifical personality programs will simply be inferior to a complex, fully realized human mind...
Quote from: Eclipse Phase Glossary- AGI: Artificial General Intelligence. An AI that has cognitive faculties comparable to that of a human or higher. Also known as "strong AI" (differentiating from more specialized "weak AI"). See also "seed AI." n AI: Artificial Intelligence. Generally used to refer to weak
- AIs; i.e., AIs that do not encompass (or in some cases, are completely outside of) the full range of human cognitive abilities. AIs differ from AGIs in that they are usually specialized and/or intentionally crippled/limited.
Not seeing how these mesh... Not seeing how an AGI would be inferior. Oh! You mean in your backwards opinion. Gotcha. I am excited that someone with your opinions is looking at the game. It's supposed to help us answer these tough questions. Maybe it will overcome your morph-bigotry. :-O :-P
Quote from: Spike;650440Those human informorphs will not be in natural organic bodies, but artifical morphs of one sort or another...
Did you read the book? You can get downloaded into a biomorph. Or a pod. Or a synth. There's no law, rule or reason in EP that an infomorph must occupy a synthetic morph.
Quote from: Spike;650440We haven't even started talking about data corruption and loss yet...
We didn't have to. They talk about how infrequent that is in the book.
Quote from: Spike;650440This is actually discussed in the book via the Futuras and was a spectacular failure. EP explicitely shows that trying to build a new transhuman from the ground up, like a machine, results in murderous psychosis and sociopathy for some 99% of all subjects.
No. This proved that accelerated growth cloning doesn't work. Also, these were children with memory implants not infomorphs. Also, having psychic powers via the Watts-MacLeod virus didn't help either. Firestarter anyone? Infomorphs have a background and a natural growth period with real memories and most aren't infected with Watts-MacLeod.
Quote from: Spike;650440There are two reasons why people would remain mere splices, which are literally only 80% as capable as the average morph: 'religious' reasons and cost.
Quote from: Eclipse PhaseSplicers are genefixed humans. Their genome has been cleansed of hereditary diseases and optimized for looks and health, but has not otherwise been substantially upgraded. Splicers make up the majority of transhumanity.
Dude. Yeah. The MAJORITY are still SPLICERS. You should read the book again, because the EP in your head is so alien, I feel like we're exploring an exoplanet.
Quote from: Spike;650440So, demographically, the Splicers are dying out, regardless of wether or not they are in the majority now. Once they are gone, then what?
They aren't. But if they were, this could be one of the hard questions you and your players get to answer in your EP game. What is human? It's one of the themes for sure, but I have not read anything in the setting that insists this is the way it's headed. Maybe one possible way, but not THE way.
Quote from: Spike;650440The Futura Morph project more or less establishes as canon the fact that modern morphs aren't, possibly can't, simply breed like people do.
Holy fuck sauce. In EP, you can procreate the old fashioned way or grow a baby in a vat. See my response on the Futura misconceptions above.
Quote from: Spike;650440Nonsense. That's just bad science.
Space is limited, they talk about it in the book and provide the reasons why. You may disagree, but your misperceptions of the setting aren't selling me on your attention to detail. You skimmed these books and took away piles of wrongness, I can't imagine your science books fared any better. Most of this science is theoretical in the first place! How are your theories any more sound than the authors?
Quote from: Spike;650440{nonsense about resources} EP's society is technologically advanced enough that they aren't going to lack resources in space.
There are three economies and the largest is controlled by hyper-corporations. It's old school and they control resources cause that's a great way to control people. Hell there's a significant population of indentured servants in the inner system! There's logistics in gathering raw materials to make Cornucopia machines operate. Is it perfectly scientifically accurate? I don't know, but I like the way it's outlined. It's believable. It sets up a setting where you can play in a utopian paradise or a dystopian crowded space-station.
So, I don't mind you wanted to refute me, but for fuck's sake, at least understand the material we're talking about here. You don't like they way they did it. Great. But don't shit all over the facts as presented in the setting. EP as presented is those authors ideas on how this works. If you don't agree, you should release your own vision. You can even use most of their material under the CC license as long as you don't charge for it!
You could look to Iain M Bankes and the Culture for possible future scenarios
He holds that people still want to have children and families just because they do. these units remain in tact for a decade or so then naturally split up as people move on. He has less morph options that EP in general use, though in reality there are many more options , an almost limitless number, because most people like being people shaped when your tech gets to a level where you can inbed tech easily, gland drugs on demand, change hormones and self heal, where you can toughen bones and improve and augment senses then the need to morph reduces.
People that want to inhabit robots or what not do it because they want to not because they have to except under very extreme circumstances and even then its usually due to manners (ie looking like a Human on a world of cat peopel migh be deemed rude) rather than adaptability.
I see EP as a step on this path and as Spike says there are no material restrictions, you can even create all matter from subattomic particles if you have enough tech, and in theory massivley extended life means that the society will get to the high tech end point.
if society continues it is largely because it chooses to do so.
There is really no good reason why most of the biomorphs described in the EP Core couldn't have children the old-fashioned way. Maybe the parents need to aquire a licence if a hypercorp still holds copyrights over their morphs, or they could ask their friendly neighborhood anarchist genehacker to remove the DRM...
Still, I would like to know what happens if, say, a Ruster and an Olympian conceive a child - what morph is the child? Can parents in EP simply buy a Menton template and apply it to the embryo if they decide their offspring should be a genius?
And yes, the problem with the Futura project was that a combination of too much accelerated simulspace and the infection by the Watts-MacLeod-strain drove many / most of the children crazy. The procedure itself, however, was sound and would have worked.
Quote from: Spike;650440I don't blame you for saying that. The book repeats it often enough, but in this the book is wrong. Not politically wrong, just factually wrong. EP's society is technologically advanced enough that they aren't going to lack resources in space. Not our solar system, certainly.
And that is one of the biggest reasons why I can't take the game seriously, the science is more political than factual.
Once you get in orbit, you are halfway to anywhere. Plus, the solar system contains eight other planets, hundreds of moons, millions of asteroids, and billions of comets. It is raining soup out there.
The humans of EP become the Great Old Ones of the next iteration of the universe.
Quote from: jeff37923;650716And that is one of the biggest reasons why I can't take the game seriously, the science is more political than factual.
Once you get in orbit, you are halfway to anywhere. Plus, the solar system contains eight other planets, hundreds of moons, millions of asteroids, and billions of comets. It is raining soup out there.
?
It's raining vacuum. There's a lot of SPACE between all that "soup".
I'm not getting where you folks are coming from. How are your theories any more sound than the authors? I find your opinions about resources and space to be absurd. It's not just about the existence of all these planets, moons and asteroids, but also the energy and time required to convert "every available thing" into living space. Some people don't even want Mars terraformed and are opposed to altering any natural habitat. This scarcity is largely due to ideologies, economies, resources, time, and even focus/motivation (why build a new habitat when this floating city here on Venus is just fine?). There's a huge human factor here, and it's a central concept to the theme of the game.
I still think some of Transhumanity will found colonies on Exoplanets, and eventually learn to master quantum physics and the Pandora Gates, opening up interstellar travel and exploration. I think humanity is already irrevocably altered and will embark on populating the galaxy as a new super adaptable species. Someday they may even solve the riddles of the precursors and the bracewall probes and AGI singularity apocalypses and the whole shebang. I also think the Jovian Republic will remain isolated and generations of minimally-altered humans will live and die in a Diaspora floating in space. 1000 years from the EP timeline the Transhuman explorers could bump back into the traditionalist sleepers, thinking they found a new insular species...
Quote from: trechriron;650869I'm not getting where you folks are coming from. How are your theories any more sound than the authors? I find your opinions about resources and space to be absurd. It's not just about the existence of all these planets, moons and asteroids, but also the energy and time required to convert "every available thing" into living space.
Ah no you shouldn't underestimate the sheer amount of stuff out there. The asteroid Eros which has already been surveyed by the Near probe contains about 3% metal. Even a very cautious estimate suggests 20 billion tons of aluminium along with similar amounts of gold, platinum and other rarer metals.
In the 2,900 cubic kms of Eros, there is more aluminium, gold, silver, zinc and other base and precious metals than have ever been excavated in history or indeed, could ever be excavated from the upper layers of the Earth's crust.
That is just in one asteroid and not a very large one at that. There are hundreds of thousands of asteroids of similar size out there. And energy, well fortunately someone left an immense nuclear reactor just throwing out more energy than we can ever use right in the middle of the solar system. I wouldn't even worry about environmental concerns, there isn't any environment in space.
Quote from: trechriron;650869?
It's raining vacuum. There's a lot of SPACE between all that "soup".
It isn't the vacuum or the SPACE, it is the kinetic energy. That can be overcome using technology we have today with solar sails and magnetic sails.
Quote from: trechriron;650869I'm not getting where you folks are coming from. How are your theories any more sound than the authors?
We know our Science and Engineering? Sorry, but
Eclipse Phase's authors may know the transhumanist genre of science fiction, but that doesn't make them knowledgeable in Science and Engineering.
Quote from: trechriron;650869I find your opinions about resources and space to be absurd. It's not just about the existence of all these planets, moons and asteroids, but also the energy and time required to convert "every available thing" into living space. Some people don't even want Mars terraformed and are opposed to altering any natural habitat. This scarcity is largely due to ideologies, economies, resources, time, and even focus/motivation (why build a new habitat when this floating city here on Venus is just fine?). There's a huge human factor here, and it's a central concept to the theme of the game.
That is part of the problem. If the human factor is so important, than why is their transhuman technology outlook ignoring the easy way of doing things? If you have the transhuman technology postulated in
Eclipse Phase, then why are the people choosing to not embrace it?
Quote from: trechriron;650869I still think some of Transhumanity will found colonies on Exoplanets, and eventually learn to master quantum physics and the Pandora Gates, opening up interstellar travel and exploration. I think humanity is already irrevocably altered and will embark on populating the galaxy as a new super adaptable species. Someday they may even solve the riddles of the precursors and the bracewall probes and AGI singularity apocalypses and the whole shebang. I also think the Jovian Republic will remain isolated and generations of minimally-altered humans will live and die in a Diaspora floating in space. 1000 years from the EP timeline the Transhuman explorers could bump back into the traditionalist sleepers, thinking they found a new insular species...
If they cannot conquer and use all of the resources of the solar system, then they probably won't know fuck-all about what to do in interstellar space or another solar system.
Quote from: The Traveller;649990That's a stirring image which sounds fairly accurate. The ultimate sterility of the concept sort of gets overlooked by a lot of its proponents.
Honestly, I think the sterility of the concept is the point. It's Cyberpunk taken to the next step. Is a human with no body, or biology, still human? How much can a person fuse with technology before ceasing to be human? At least this is how I see EP, and why I like it. It reminds me of Alistair Reynolds novels. If left to it's own devices, I see Reynold's Glitterband in EP's future. In a universe of inhuman "personalities", it's the humanity of the PCs that gets explored and celebrated. If they go there, the future of EP's universe is up to the PCs to decide.
Quote from: Spike;650440This is actually discussed in the book via the Futuras and was a spectacular failure. EP explicitely shows that trying to build a new transhuman from the ground up, like a machine, results in murderous psychosis and sociopathy for some 99% of all subjects.
Most of your other factually incorrect statements have already been addressed, but this is also factually incorrect: What you're actually referencing is an attempt to create a new generation of transhumans completely in a simulated reality where the speed of time was increased so that they would come of age in years instead of decades.
This has nothing to do with artificially splicing two genomes together, birthing the resulting child, and raising it the same way that children have always been raised.
QuoteWhat, exactly, is lacking then?
The time required to establish the industry required for extraction. The default setting is just 10 years after the Fall and the solar system is still in the process of rebuilding its industrial base.
Things are limited
right now in the setting, but it's a purely short-term problem.
This, BTW, gets us back to Benoist's original question: In the absence of a fresh catastrophe, the future of Eclipse Phase is a gilded age of absurd plenty. I'd agree with those saying that Banks' Culture books are a pretty good place to start for inspiration.
Some jackass will invent a way to wirelessly resleeve as the technology becomes easier and faster and then some 12 year old hacker will Agent Smith the Solar system with beta forks.