Reading about the incredible events in the Middle East and Northern Africa got me thinking about this issue. In Eclipse Phase, civil disobedience would probably still be the most common way to topple a government. Protesters would need to be even more courageous because public surveillance and nano-taggers ensure the authorities know exactly who is involved. Microwave Agonizers could disperse most biomorph crowds that weren't prepared for them, but the core book doesn't list any non-lethal options to target the clanking masses; however, overload grenades would work on everyone. This assumes that the revoloutionaries have physical bodies and can gather in some sort of public space; the best bet informorphs might be some sort of fairly simple hacking that benefits from lots of participants -the post-Fall equivalent of a denial of service attack.
Cell-phone videos of police brutality and torture are part of what spark modern-day revolutions, but future security forces will probably be more savvy. I imagine that careful searches for recording devices and prisoner masks (p 316) will be standard procedure, and conventional boadcasting mediums will be jammed in most detainment centers. Threats and physical violence will probably never go completely out of style, and healing vats could make sure there's no evidence; again, synthmorphs would probably need special treatment. A subtler tactic likely to cause even greater public outcry would be forced psychosurgery. Revolutionaries could still record evidence of these crimes if they're clever; nano-implant recorders might escape detection, and a quantum entangled (QE) communicator couldn't be jammed.
The best overall defense authorities have is keeping the masses happy, and the hypercorps seem adept at this. Transitional economies provide almost everyone their essential needs along with many luxuries. The main source of unrest seems to be long indentured servitude and infomorphs denied a body, but these problems will tend to decrease if morph and living space production capability continues to increase while the birth rate remains low. This assumes the corps are smart enough to realize that the sweet deals they managed to extract from infomorphs can't last forever; greedy hypercorps who resist this could fuel a revolution. At least as presented in the core book, the Jovian Republic seems like they resort to forcibly keeping the masses in line rather than trying to keep them happy, and that doesn't bode well for their long-term survival.
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What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
Sun, 2011-02-27 15:08
#1
adept42
What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
Sun, 2011-02-27 16:25
#2
Decivre
Re: What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
It's likely that governments have to be very cautious about public opinion. Mass-protests like what happened in the middle east will be much harder to silence in EP... with the multitude of life-loggers and the vast amount of data that goes out from any given location, people will get suspicious when an information blackout (no matter how surgical or specific) occurs. Places that already have a degree of information blackout, like the Junta, will have less of an issue with protests and revolts. Other habs are used to information not going in or coming out of there. But places like the inner system and anarchist habs will have a much higher degree of sousveillance integrity which will be hard to break.
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age.
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Mon, 2011-02-28 09:20
#3
TBRMInsanity
Re: What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
Propaganda is king in my opinion. The Jovian Junta maintains control through fear (but not fear of the Junta, fear that the TITANs are still active). It's a political structure similar to that in the USA after 9/11 where the evil TITANs are poised to wipe out humanity, and only isolationist networks, a large military, and authorized use of WMD will keep Jovian Citizens safe. Once this propaganda sheet falls though, you will see the Junta fall with it.
—
Jovian Motto:
Your mind is original. Preserve it.
Your body is a temple. Maintain it.
Immortality is an illusion. Forget it.
Mon, 2011-02-28 12:46
#4
The Green Slime
Re: What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
I think governments of the transhuman era would bear little resemblance to anything we would recognise today. With the advanced degree of automation throughout society and ubiquitous self-organisation derived from the mesh there would be scant need for the antiquated models of centralised governance, and resistance to such, derived from the old days of Earth. All bases of power, whether nation-state government, corporate, emergent collectives, etc. would be very nebulous operations.
Already in the present dark ages we're seeing social networks expediting the will of the people at a geometric rate. In centuries hence revolutions will be incited after breakfast and resolved before lunchtime without the need to so much as leave the house. The means of struggle will be almost entirely memetic - each side striving to win the propaganda war by subverting each others' PR fronts and out-spinning the competition. Actually coming to open blows over an issue would be viewed as the most epic of fails and would brand the instigator as too unsophisticated to play the game of power.
Remember the threat of violence is negligible in a society that knows no death. Mass protests could be put down with carpet bombing without earning much more than a disapproving tut. Physical conflict is practically pointless, as whoever you kill will only return to bug you in some other form, and having gained a memetic ownage on you by uploading XP and spime-feed of your murderous act to the mesh.
Of course none of this obviates the possibility of dangerous and subversive actions in meatspace. All your incumbent opposition's cleverly political bon mots in the public arena wouldn't mean jack if, say, your agents had sabotaged a factory or power plant in such a way as to make it look like systemic ineptitude brought about by his nefarious cronyism. The point wouldn't be the destruction of property per se, but the loss of face you'd inflict upon him in the media after the fact.
Withholding, altering or generating new information faster than his OODA loop can process it would be the main means of political conflict no matter how grass roots and extemporaneous the political entities involved. Protesting, i.e. marching your morph down a thoroughfare sounding your dissatisfaction, would only be a very remote and inefficient option. I think most transhumans who saw you doing so would think you were engaged in some kind of historical reenactment.
Of course none of this holds true for in the Junta, where surely shooting people who don't agree with you is as good a means of political dialogue as it's ever been.
—
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[i]Time will perfect matter.[/i]
Tue, 2011-03-01 22:51
#5
adept42
Re: What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
I disagree. A purely memetic war of words is fine until you get a meme that says: "Stop listening to the other side and defeat them by force." The notion that coming to blows over an issue is "the most epic of fails" is itself a meme that can be attacked and changed just like any other one. You could argue that it's somehow possible to create a society where the "stop listening" memes are swiftly identified and eliminated, but I don't see any society like that described in the Eclipse Phase corebook. On the contrary, most major groups have proven themselves willing and able to stop talking and start shooting.
Large-scale protests are the last chance to find a relatively peacful resolution before a conflict between a government and it's people errupts into an all-out civil war; they're won if a side can demonstrate that they'd be the winners if war did ultimately break out. Rallies and marches don't just communicate how many people share a point of view, they demonstrate how much people are willing to risk to advance their ideals. This depth of committment is very difficult to gauge without a real-life test; an activist could spend lots of time blogging about how much they hate the government but not have the guts to put their own skin on the line to change it.
The technology of Eclipse Phase does not make physical violence and death irrelevant. A Barsoomian revolutionary might be backed up, but very few will be able to easily afford another duster morph if their body gets killed. Beyond that, the pain of being hurt or killed still inflicts mental anguish; this is clearly reflected in the game mechanics for stress and mental disorders. My impression from the corebook was that murder was still a very serious crime, and carpet bombing protesters would provoke a lot more than a "disapproving tut!"
Willingness to die for your cause is the ultimate level of dedication, but lower levels can still have a major impact. The protestors in Egypt knew that their chances of being killed were fairly low, but their chances of being tear-gassed, beaten, or arrested were pretty significant; the courage to endure that level of punishment was enough to topple the regime. Governments can raise the stakes, but that's a test for their own forces as much as for the protestors. In Libya, Gadhafi's orders for deadly force have resulted in mass defections of his own millitary, police, and government officials. Killing your own people in Eclipse phase might be easier if you know they can be brought back, but it still requires a dangerous level of callousness; if your soldiers can casually massacre innocent civilians, just think what they'd do to you and your backups under the right circumstances. Fear of respraisal keeps most present-day leaders from relentlessly escalating any threat to their power, and there's no reason that future leaders will be any less prudent.
Wed, 2011-03-02 08:11
#6
Demonseed Elite
Re: What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
Very true. Additionally, the threat of torture by repressive regimes is quite possibly far worse than today. Richard K. Morgan's books bring up this topic a few times, but you really don't want your ego to fall into a repressive regime's hands. The things they can do to you, in accelerated simulspace without ever killing you, are truly frightening to behold. Even if you're backed up and cold enough not to care what is happening to your other self, the threat that your enemy could fork your ego, apply psychosurgery to it, and turn you against you is a pretty effective threat to most revolutionaries.
—
"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." --The White Queen, [i]Through The Looking-Glass[/i]
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Wed, 2011-03-02 09:10
#7
MirrorField
Re: What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
Which means that anyone with serious revolutionary aspirations will probably be an any combination of a) a carefully edited beta fork, b) equipped with a dead switch (which in my campaign can also be triggered consciously by the ego as an AF10 version of the cyanide capsule), c) psychosurgically implanted with nasty polymorphically encrypted viruses and d) having multiply-redundant backups across system, some of which the ego itself will have no knowledge about.
OPSEC will be much more stringent than today: There is no torture that can make you reveal things that you truly don't know.
This is the "pro" approach which should be SOP for a Firewall operative. TITANs can be more frightening than any oppressive government, after all...
ObNote: This is also the approach of other pro- or even semi-pro clandestine agents who know that a temporary death is not to be feared, but the judgement of your performance by your superiors holding your backups is another thing entirely...
Wed, 2011-03-02 16:00
#8
Acatalepsy
Re: What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
I have to disagree with...well, everything that's been said actually. Some of the thinking is, while valid, misses the larger point. It's an ironic failing of science fiction that it continually predicts the future to be like the present, but more like the present than like the past. In this case, the ME revolutions are current...but in EP they'll be ancient history. You're letting your thinking be influenced by the specifics of a revolution in the present far more than is justified. It's better to, rather than making analogies to historic or conceptual models, try and envision a revolution step by step, paying attention to the little details.
What does a revolution look like in Eclipse Phase? Let's look at some examples! What is the biggest example you can think of? It's not the Anarchists or the Autonomists - it's the Argonauts. Sometime between BF 40 - 20, several members of the techno-progressive movement become fed up with hypercorp policies, and simply...left.
From the hypercorp perspective, it starts with this one habitat that's always been a bit of a troublemaker suddenly issuing this "Argonaut Manifesto", letting everyone know what they're doing, and why they're doing it. You want to tell them to shut up and get back in line...but, well, you can't stop the signal, and it's been mirrored up and down the Solar System. The hypercorp whose habitat just got jacked wants their habitat back, but, well, it turns out that someone's already compromised your security codes, personnel and equipment on that station. You're basically screwed, in the short term. You have no way to get troops onto the station in any sort of reasonable time frame, and the rebels likely outnumber your local agents. That's bad, but it's not the end of the world. You tell all your other habitats to go on alert, start doing massive security audits to prevent them from trying to take anything else.
Then another habitat announces that they're following the first's example. Then another. Then another. All of a sudden, every hypercorp in the system is collectively crapping their pants, because everyone has technoprogressives on their stations. Lockdowns start being initiated, locking out systems from making ANY change, and corporate agents begin egocasting to likely problem habitats.
We don't see any sort of mass demonstrations - what would that prove? Mass violence is messy, and messy things get people killed in space. The real revolution is electronic. The rebels need to take control of egocasting and defense facilities, and disable or discredit local representatives of the hypercorps. The most dangerous revolutionaries are the ones with access. If the local manager of your station defects to the rebels - at gunpoint or otherwise - you've lost the station. Lockdowns buy you time to move agents in, fabricate extra security drones, etc. Several 'revolutions' by overeager 'revolutionaries' get stopped cold by security protocols, and then by drones with nonlethal gear. Still more simply...stop responding, and there's little you can do about it.
The revolution is over in a relatively short timeframe. Maybe a week; probably much less. Afterwords there is scuffling and difficulties; as hijacked habs reorganize for the new bosses, and prepare for the hypercorp counterattack. It comes, as expected; a hab or two defects back. One or more habitats initially thought secure defects when either a high-ranking individual is compromised, or security codes cracked by repurposed quantum clusters. Still, it's mostly over, and the difficult part - creating a new social entity while under constant memetic and informational assault - begins.
On each individual habitat, the actual revolution itself is likely to be a combination effort from the 'hackers', the hard-core of the revolution and the ones looking to 'liberate' the defenses, and the flash mobs of supporters. Again, actual mobs are unnecessary and dangerous; but anyone who happens to be in a position to assist the revolution gets a call ("kill the power in this section; stall security forces in this sector; run this distributed app here"). These aren't bloodless, not completely - but the emphasis is on quick and quiet neutralization of opposing assets, rather than putting "pressure" on a "regime".
Not that this is true for habitat-based revolutions. A Barsoomian or Jovian revolution will look very different, due to the ease of travel. But it will NOT look like Libya, or Egypt - assuming Mars 10AF would be like Egypt 2011 would be like assuming Libya 2011 would look like America 1776. You have to construct specific scenarios. Transhumans can't count on troops being unwilling to open fire - we have AI equipped bots now, and Reapers do IFF, not national identity.
—
[I]This isn't a war ordinary humans can win. This is the future. Death's an inconvenience, now. Nothing more.[/I]
Thu, 2011-03-03 10:03
#9
nezumi.hebereke
Re: What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
Argonauts are the exception though - they have the skill to hack computers and so on. You also assume a homogenous population of revolutionaries - which also is unlikely - and that this is a surprise. Granted, if your first station is a tiny research station of 6 dudes and a supercomputer, maybe, but a station with 1,000 people? You'll likely see at most one third revolutionaries, one third loyalties, one third indifferent, and a LOT of debate and propaganda preceding it.
But there is indeed a large frontier, so there's not stopping that third from picking up their stakes and leaving. It might even be seen as desirable. Sending trouble-makers off to the fringes is an established and effective method of social control.
This doesn't address the issues of a planet-side revolution, which will follow a more classic formula, and less likely to have such super-educated people among their ranks.
Thu, 2011-03-03 10:30
#10
Arenamontanus
Re: What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
Who haven't? Remember, by this time computer hacking is not a skill for some elite scientific priesthood or hackers. It has been street tech, standard activist tools, corporate and military security, and personal self defence for *generations*.
The real issue in any revolution is: can you seize the control over the key parts of government? In EP, these involve security, the physical and the informational infrastructure. However, thanks to the economic shifts, it might be possible to win while not taking over the economic infrastructure of the old government - just shift to the New Economy. That really changes a lot of things, since now an aspect of governance that previously was strongly tied to the previous elites and their remote allies can be ignored to some extent. You still have to win the other three, but things just got 25% simpler.
—
Thu, 2011-03-03 12:19
#11
nezumi.hebereke
Re: What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
I feel comfortable assuming that the most powerful governments and corporations in the solar system will maintain an edge over the barsoomian farm boys. If you can't protect against that, computer technology becomes too unreliable to use.
Thu, 2011-03-03 13:58
#12
Arenamontanus
Re: What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
Hmm, we see that at least cybersecurity firms get taken to the cleaners by Anonymous. Ars Technica's coverage had an insightful detail: they were unprepared for a continuing onslaught using all available means - defending against that is quite costly. I also somehow suspect Iran did not skimp on the security of that nuclear plant stuxnet seems to have messed up. And I do think we have good reasons to think major governments underreport intrusions into sensitive systems
Software outsources skills. You need to be a clever programmer to come up with a hack of a system, but if you put it into a rootkit then any farmboy can do it.
I am actually not too confident that computer technology in EP is reliable. It looks almost like Ghost in the Shell, in that people depend on systems that are quite hackable but they still have lousy firewalls.
Imagine a DDOS-like attack on a system in EP: 1000 computers around the mesh, each running some software with a hidden AI with Infosec 40 trying to hack your system. How many turns will it last?
—
Thu, 2011-03-03 14:30
#13
adept42
Re: What do revolutions look like after the Fall?
You make a lot of good points, and I agree that revolutions on relatively small and isolated habitats could happen as you describe; once the revolutionaries sieze control of life support, they've pretty much won. Still, I think that looking at modern-day revolutions can be instructive because humanity's culture and psychology has not changed as much as humanity's technology and environment in the post-fall world. Despite many important differences, I do think the American and Egyptian revolutions share much in common; the Factors would have no trouble in identifying both as the same sort of human social phenomenon.
As for AI Reapers, I don't see many societies in Eclipse Phase using those sort of means to keep their populace in line. Everyone is still worried about the TITANs' return, and surrounding yourself with an army of killer robots is a clear recipe for dissater. Plus, revolutionaries could hack the system and do just as much damage. It makes a lot of sense that biomorph and biomind security is the norm.