h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

before the Justice Department
blithely approved AT&T's acquisition of the MediaOne Group, giving AT&T control of more than a third of the
nation's cable networks for television, high-speed Net access and online telephone service. Those mergers,
acquisitions and consolidations would fit easily within the Shadowrun narrative.

By the middle of the 21st Century, explains Shadowrun's latest edition, "multinational megacorps pull the world's
puppet-strings to benefit their bottom lines ... The technology we depend on doesn't bring us together. Worldwide
communications net? Great idea, but not much use when half the population is zoned out on simsense chips and
the rest can't access a working data terminal in the slums where they're forced to live. The rich have gotten richer
and the poor more plentiful, so the wealthy barricade themselves in armed enclaves and leave the rest of us to
squat and rot."

The idea of the Shadowrunner in such a universe almost perfectly captures the worsening plight of the individual in
our own era, when family farmers, small businesspeople, software designers, individuals of all sorts are losing
opportunity to tell their own stories, shape their own lives and economic futures. In fact, "Shadowrunner" is a
perfect term for individualistic refugees in the Corporate Realm.

Today's Shadowrunners are mobile, as individualists of the future will have to be. They can count on having more
than one job, since they can never go along enough to satisfy corporate administrators. They will probably also live
in more than once place. They're likely to be discarded, downsized or re-engineered as a result of "flexible"
management philosophies and ever-shifting marketing goals. But even if they are allowed to remain, they are likely
to grow bored and frustrated, and passed over for promotion. As for the idea of living outside guarded, walled
enclaves, that's already more than a fantasy: Just visit Redmond (a name frequently invoked in "Shadowrun") for a
couple of days, or Silicon Valley (the epitome of the megacorp enclave from which average folks get driven out)
and the idea takes on real meaning.

The cyberware in "Shadowrun" even parallels recent advances in genetics -- advances which have drawn the
impassioned interest of biotech corporations moving to track genes in the name of improving humanity even as
they anticipate landmark profits. Cyberware consists of various technological implants, organ modifications, and
structural enhancements to the "metahuman" body that can improve a character's attributes and abilities.

There are other eerie parallels in "Shadowrun." Take the way lifestyle becomes a pressing economic issue. Game
players must purchase a character's opening lifestyle, which determines how comfortably the character lives. To
maintain that lifestyle once the play begins, characters make monthly payments. When a character can't pay, he
finds himself living a lower lifestyle. Sound familiar?

In other ways, however, Shadowrun doesn't bear much resemblance to our world. During the "Great Awakening,"
a turbulent period follows the corps' takeover of the world. The handbook describes it: "A long lull in the mystical
energies of the universe has subsided and magic has returned to the world. Elves, dwarfs, orks and trolls have
assumed their true forms, throwing off their human guises ... The many traditions of magic have come back to life
..."

But magic has become a casualty in the Corporate Republic. We already live in a world where culture itself is
mass-marketed by the corps, where opinion and social agendas are set by companies like Microsoft,
AOL/Time-Warner and the Walt Disney Corporation. None have a particular political agenda beyond the
subjugation of competitors, and the homogenized spread of information and entertainment to the greatest possible
numbers of consumers. That means safe, bland, palatable. It also means individuals either get co-opted or pushed
out of the creative process, since they tend to be unsafe, colorful, offensive. Magic doesn't work in focus groups
or corporate boardrooms any more than unconventional thinking. So work becomes routinized, creativity
repressed and stifled.

All corporatists have a shared goal: to give stockholders maximum rewards. That outweighs any other
consideration. Magic, the recourse of the idiosyncratic individual, is anathema to corporatism -- inherently illogical,
unpredictable, thus unprofitable.

Unlike the planet dwellers in Shadowrun, most of this country hasn't yet awakened to the fact that it's being
corporatized. We live in a distinctly unconscious civilization, where our own megacorps hae been allowed to grow
so quickly, and with so little thought or restraint, that they're already almost too powerful too curb or regulate. But
even some of our smartest citizens are in denial about this increasingly undeniable reality. After all, isn't
unemployment still fairly low and the Nasdaq once more on the rise? Politicians and cititizens appear to have
dozed right through the fact that small businesses are vanishing, that free speech is withering, that the political
system is being bought, that a once-free press is nearly completely in corporate hands. Even the country's most
prestigious colleges and research institutions are now dependent on corporate fund-raising.

Increasingly, technology is at the center of this conflict, as the Shadowrunners make clear. It's both the instrument
by which the megacorps dominate segments of society and the primary means allowing individualism to survive,
especially online.

The truth is, it's been decades since our world began changing beyond recognition. As a people, we are innovating
almost beyond imagination, spawning the Net, the Human Genome Project, quantum leaps in supercomputing. But
increasingly, we create for money rather than for the pure pleasure of bringing something new into the world. Our
best scientific minds are developing and marketing hand-held appliances that give humanity instant access to sports
scores and stock quotes. Rather than using technology to improve the lot of mankind, we are allowing it to
separate us even further from each other.

This, perhaps is the real challenge and the work of the Shadowrunner, to weave in and out of our increasingly
Corporate Republic, weaving through its databases, sharing technological discoveries and secrets, perhaps even
waging creative guerrilla war on behalf of the individual.

The Shadowrunners, in the game and in the world, are realists. They understand the nature of the world they live
in. They are what is perhaps the rarest of figures in contemporary American public life -- heretics.

Throughout history, the heretic was someone who demonstrated unforgivable intellectual arrogance by preferring
his or her own faiths, values and beliefs to those -- priests and monarchs, mostly -- who were "qualified" to make
pronouncements and declarations about matters of faith, morality and human values. Heresy was high treason,
committed against God or King, and almost always was punishable by death or torture.

But in The Corporate Republic, high treason is an anachronism almost never invoked, mostly because it's no
longer necessary. We don't need to pull people's fingernails out any more, or burn them at the stake. The heretic
today is marginalized without any bloodshed. He doesn't even take the risks the Shadowrunner takes. His teacher
and peers make him a joke in the classroom, and ignore or isolate him. His career is either destroyed outright, as it
being fired or demoted.

A generation ago, "Shadowrun" would have seemed a particularly geeky game, the obsessive fantasy of brainy
oddballs holed up in their bedrooms and basements. At the dawn of the 21st century, in the Corporate Republic, it
looms much larger, both a warning and a prophesy.


6-27-00

The Emp opening show was good. Metallica's set was only 50min ;( Rhcp were cool
and Filter played "Nice Shot". That was a good thing. Had a lot of fun the whole
trip.

Getting a little anxious to do something out of the ordanary. Need to make some chash
first. Until then.

-erik


7-1-00

The killer awoke at dawn and put his boots on. He walked into the room where his brother
lay to say good bye. He then proceeded down the hallway. At the end waits his
parents' room. He stepped inside for one more time. They are sleeping on thier backs, both
looking at the celing through their eyelids, fearing the dawn. The sun had alread risen,
and the sky was a light blue smeared with pastel clouds. It is obvious that it is summer because the air only has the slightest chill. This time of year always conguers romantic
images of children playing, and relaxing in the shade. No time to marvle at the simplisity
of the time though, for more pressing matters loom.

Town is always quite this time of day. A few passing cars and the distant barking of a dog
are all that break the restrictive silence. Already the temperature was rising. Earliler
that month, the heat killed the last sense of well-being that he had. His last friend, the
only one who wouldn't betray him, had surcome to the heat. The harddrive had lost over half
the data in less than an hour. It had become trash. Now he is drifting to the only
only place he can think of... The car sitting on the corner with the "for sale" sign looked
as good as any other to choose from. He opened the unlocked door, tore the ignition wires
down, and crossed the yellow with the red. That was all it took.

On the way to the next town he took the "for sale" sign out of the window and checked the gas
guage. Whoever was selling this hadn't put enough fuel in it to even allow for a decent test
drive.



Who knows, maybe I will finish that story. It has potental. Probably end up showing the
man's hatred for suburbia. I am trying to find an older story I wrote allong the same
lines(even tho it was far more brutal and distrubing) with a friend, but I seems to have
disappeared from my harddrive. Probably from that crash that destoryed all my other old
stuff.. Still feeling the affects of that crash months later. I didn't even lose
that much data, just some old backup stuff, and other minor junk. Well, I am going to get
of and watch some tv now. Maybe I will allow others to add to this story if i can figure
out how to cross a message board and some custom cgi script.. there's an idea.

-erik


7-5-00

Insomenia is a bad thing. I know I should sleep, I want sleep, I need sleep, yet am I
sleeping? NO. It isn't for lack of trying though.

The fact I can see the refresh rate of my monitor is buggin the crap out of me. I look
around my foorm and I see this really fast strobbing effect. My eyes can still see both the
dark phase and the light phase clearly. On the subject of refresh rates, that is why I
got so many headaches at school, I could see the flicker of those old florecent lights. Very
glad they put ones with working phosphors in this year.

I was poor yesterday, today I received my checks, and got another pc order.. not poor now.
That put me in a good mood, then I realized I haven't slept much, and now I'm just a tad
tired. Learned a long time ago not to get angry when having trouble sleeping. Anger only
makes sleep more elusive.

If I am to avoid going broke again, I need more referrals... hope my article gets
approved.

Ah, the flicker is gone.. My eyes have been blugened to death by the radiation of my crt.
Much better. The room is a steady dark glow now. Beautiful lighting. Just enough to
see, but not enough to be sure of what you see.

And the clock keep ticking, so it goes.

Need sleep.

Want sleep.

No sleep.

Damn.


The moon is finally in the correct phase, the project will be concluded tomarrow.

I miss the flicker now, it was interesting, the glow is boring.

My frickin shoulder is hurtting. Pain bad! Wish I knew when to quit so I would give
this stupid thing time to heal.

Sleep?

Purple.

I guess I will try the bed again, my chair isn't working.


-erik

Is it possible that you might just be ....insane?? I tried to keep track of the story line, but you lost me half-way...bye!

Yes, that is probably what my problem. Insane sums it up quite well. Thanks for the comments.

-erik