I think, most Argonaut owned stations act like a university campus. The important and interesting stuff is done by the Argonauts themselves while maintenance and other services are either done by non-academic argonauts (transhumans without knowledge of higher learning), 100% AI controlled (most likely) or are hired helpers. Movement is heavily regulated, someone who is responsible of directing the cleaning drones can't enter the lab areas without the consent and/or escort of someone who actually has the clearance. I believe that most of them are very trusting when it comes to technology. Moreso than other transhumans. I imagine here some parts of the Arankian psychology from the novel Spectrum: They "blindly" trust their technology, because it either is quite reliable or has dozens of failsafes. Its not so much blind faith but simple confidence. As for a governmental body (if there is any), i think a meritocracy would be the one that made the most sense. The guy with the most Dr.'s before his names is the boss.

Arenamontanus wrote:

The argonauts of myth were not just the companion to Jason, but also the great Greek-myth crossover: every hero was there - Atalanta, Augeas, Autolycus, Castor and Pollux, Cepheus, Hercules, Nestor, Perseus, Theseus... The Jason group was indeed named after Jason himself. Why the link to the advisory group? What did it do that so strongly impressed the argonauts? The squabble with DARPA hardly counts.

From what I read in the history section on Firewall, it seems that many members of JASON formed the basis for the Argonauts. This may also be the source of its name—it perhaps considered itself, at formation, the autonomous counterpart to the government-funded JASON.

Arenamontanus wrote:

The defections BF 40 and onwards are clearly an important part of the formation of the Argonauts and predates the anarchist/scum defections by decades. These were the guys who partially showed how it could be done.

It's even possible that the Argonauts actually supported and aided the spread of groups fleeing the hypercorporate social structure that was forming around Earth and the inner system. If that were the case, they would be the guys who mostly, if not [i]totally[/i], showed how it could be done.

Arenamontanus wrote:

The organisation needs a great deal of funding: where is it coming from? Licensing, consulting and bartering seems unlikely to reach the necessary level. The culture sounds like it is a radicalised form of the scientific community. Science as a lifestyle and ideology and not just a calling. But are argonaut stations 100% argonaut (including argonaut street sweepers), or are they like universities or companies where the argonauts work on the core stuff and then hire people to support it? The argonauts are obviously security and resiliency conscious, given their many enemies. Did they get this good due to hard lessons (in which case we should expect a lot of the defections in BF 40 to have failed) or did they start out with secret coordination and allies? In that case, who?

Are we talking pre-Fall or post-Fall? Pre-Fall, the Argonauts likely garnered a lot of resources and support from various educational institutions, scientific organizations, and political groups that espoused similar principles of scientific transparency. Post-fall, I agree that a large amount of their backing probably comes from licensing and think-tank work. But I imagine that hypercorps who wish to maintain secrecy with regards to research are reticent to work with the Argonauts… they know that any research and tech disclosed to an Argonaut is likely to hit their databanks at some point, and get distributed from there to everyone in the outer system. Argonaut-exclusive installations seem to be fairly rare, with only two being detailed in the books so far. My guess is that the majority of their existence is alongside other groups, as can be seen on Ilmarinen or Hooverman-Geischecker. The only hab that probably has exclusive Argonaut presence is Markov, as it is the location for their central backup server and most important faction-exclusive information (it might also be a key datastore for Firewall). Mitre seems to allow visitors from outside the organization, and might even contract services from inner system hypercorps for maintenance services (and to keep up public appearances). Lastly, I think that secrecy is ingrained into the Argonaut culture. Since many scientists who were founding members of the group came from JASON, they understand the basic protocols of security clearance. Furthermore, the Argonauts seem to have a military branch known as the Medeans (Rimward, pg 140). That informs me that they have known, at least for a while, that they must have at least a degree of distrust for the political players around them.

Unity wrote:

Does anyone else find it hilarious that it's called the Medeans, given how the Medea x Jason relationship ended up?

I think it's beautifully apt, but only in reference to the earlier parts of the mythos. The later parts could be symbolic for what will happen between the Medeans and Argonauts, however.

Arenamontanus wrote:

The argonauts of myth were not just the companion to Jason, but also the great Greek-myth crossover: every hero was there - Atalanta, Augeas, Autolycus, Castor and Pollux, Cepheus, Hercules, Nestor, Perseus, Theseus... The Jason group was indeed named after Jason himself. Why the link to the advisory group? What did it do that so strongly impressed the argonauts? The squabble with DARPA hardly counts.

The recognised history of the real-life JASONs has it that the wife of one of the founders suggested it instead of the intended name for the project (Project Sunrise) because it was more interesting to have a mythological reference in the name. Suggesting more interesting names for projects is a tradition that continues to this day inside the Beltway.

Arenamontanus wrote:

The defections BF 40 and onwards are clearly an important part of the formation of the Argonauts and predates the anarchist/scum defections by decades. These were the guys who partially showed how it could be done.

I had always thought that it was due, in part, to the EP-era incarnation of the JASONs getting tired of the bureaucracy and being handed orders that interfered with their intended tasks ("What do you mean, we can't replace the member who died before she could be uploaded? Do you want this done or not?!") It might also be that some of the members wanted to continue their (benevolent) research projects after being order to switch gears. It might also be that, by the time of EP many of the members of the JASONs had experience with the F/OSS and/or open culture communities during their formative years and carried those memes with them. When the Argonauts finally coalesced into a group those memes spread among the members, and when it came time to rebuild after the Fall open source technologies (supported by peer review of source code and designs) made perfect sense. Disseminating F/OSS source code and blue-/greyprints for technologies would be an ideal way of getting vital technologies (general purpose nanoassemblers, life support systems, hardened firmware (think OpenBSD meets OpenWRT), and designs for drones to provide additional entity-power and mechanical advantage). When your habitat is hanging on by a thread and someone picks up the greyprints for a photovoltaic power generation system off of the show notes of "The Open Infrastructure Hour" on Radio Argosy, and when built they take the load off of other systems on board the habitat, it might just save lives.

Arenamontanus wrote:

The organisation needs a great deal of funding: where is it coming from? Licensing, consulting and bartering seems unlikely to reach the necessary level.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. When you control the station you are based out of, you can pretty much make the rules, and if the rules are "We work as a collective for the betterment of Transhumanity" that sort of sets the tone. I get the impression that many members of the Argonauts are not opposed to doing consulting work for whomever will pay them (hypercorps being given to hiring contractors for development sprints at least, single projects at most), and that fairly well-to-do Argonauts tithe a certain amount of their salaries to MITRE as funding (sort of like how the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project are funded largely by donations and dues paying members). Also, there are companies that develop and release F/OSS software but charge for different levels of setup and support on a per-contract basis (like Redhat). It is also possible to develop and publish open source hardware and turn a profit off of selling specific implementations thereof (vis a vis, the Arduino).

Arenamontanus wrote:

The culture sounds like it is a radicalised form of the scientific community. Science as a lifestyle and ideology and not just a calling. But are argonaut stations 100% argonaut (including argonaut street sweepers), or are they like universities or companies where the argonauts work on the core stuff and then hire people to support it?

Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on the station. It might be that some Argonaut habitats are run like hackerspaces: Everyone has their projects, does their thing(s), and collaborate with one another, but everyone also has to contribute a certain amount of time to the space/habitat so that everyone can continue to operate efficiently. To give a real world example, at HacDC all of us pitch in to clean, restock supplies, clean the bathrooms, sweep the floor, buy soda and snacks for the kitchen, and so forth. So, lets us move this a few thousand years into the future (season to taste) for Eclipse Phase on the habitat Lab-23, in orbit around Luna. I will gloss over some things to make room for people to contribute as they will. Lab-23 is organized loosely along lines that we would consider a hackerspace; its population numbers approximately one hundred transhumans (including a dozen AGIs living and working in the habitat's mesh network). Constructed from a salvaged and repurposed heavy cargo hauler it was retrofitted into a combination living complex and reconfigurable laboratory/manufactory as an experiment in 4 AF. One of the first big projects (which netted the founders a considerable amount of @- and r-rep) was a fabber which, given the proper feedstock, mass produced general-purpose environment management drones that could be programmed with basic directives for maintenance (peform basic cleaning duties, monitor hull integrity, sample atmospheric composition sixty times a minute, gather refuse from the manufactory, deliver everything picked up to the dissembler bins for recycling). All of the designs were published under a Free Implementation v7.7 license, meaning that anyone could use the software and greyprints to outfit their ship or habitat, and they were free to manufacture the equipment on a for-profit basis so long as modifications were contributed back to the community under the same license, and users were required to publish detailed reviews of the technology and credit the manufacturer (ensuring a steady stream of rep all the way up the chain). The economy aboard the habitat is largely reputation-based, though the members/residents take consulting jobs periodically in the LLA and pay dues in the form of credits and equipment to the habitat's escrow accounts (which are earmarked for use by the habitat only) and warehouse for the maintenance and upkeep of all of its systems. Due to the habitat's position favors and reputation are not always sufficient for dealing with outside parties, hence, dues. All members are required to participate in the maintenance and upkeep of the habitat, though development of technologies which automate tasks is, of course encouraged.

Arenamontanus wrote:

The argonauts are obviously security and resiliency conscious, given their many enemies. Did they get this good due to hard lessons (in which case we should expect a lot of the defections in BF 40 to have failed) or did they start out with secret coordination and allies? In that case, who?

It seems likely that some of the Argonauts are information security specialists, and may have worked in that capacity before and during the Fall. Their focus on practical technology suggests that analyis and modeling of threats toward the end of increasing security posture and resilience became a key part of their operation because it helped save lives. MITRE was in a unique position to observe the Fall and transmit the observations and analyses of the Argonauts to the rest of transhumanity in the hope of giving everyone a better chance at survival. It would not surprise that there were Argonauts who kept their interests and affiliation private (it is nobody's business that you are a member of a trade group or hackerspace if you do not want to make it known) until it became necessary to do so.

crizh wrote:

I wonder how other people feel about the level of involvement the Argonauts had with the Singularity Foundation and the creation and subsequent concealment of the Prometheans?

It might depend on how many people remember the Foundation, and whether or not they take pains to conceal these links to avoid retribution (deserved or otherwise).

crizh wrote:

The similar mythological naming themes are suggestive.

Or perhaps it was a joke.

crizh wrote:

What awareness of or involvement do they have with Firewall? The JASONS are founder members of Firewall as are the Singularity Foundation.

Statistically speaking, some Argonauts have to be involved with Firewall in some capacity (knowing or otherwise).

crizh wrote:

Is Markov where the Prometheans were born? What else do the Argonauts have hidden in the Outer System?

What might they have hidden in asteroids they took over?

crizh wrote:

All questions and ideas I have for my own version of the Argonauts. I was looking forward to Rimward to see how many of my guesses were right.

As are mine (which shows my prejudices pretty openly, I must admit, but there is always room for other interpretations).

Arenamontanus wrote:

One thing academics tend to discover the hard way is that being a brilliant, productive researcher does not mean that you are good as a manager: those traits are uncorrelated. This means that giving the say to the best coder or most highly cited researcher is likely going to backfire. Of course, the *other* thing about management that academics tend to discover is that having a non-scientist or somebody from the wrong field lead the work tends to fail too: they don't understand what needs to be done or interfere unnecessarily.

You know if I were one of those academics and I recognised these failings in myself and my peers I'd be coding and grooming an AGI that didn't have them. Expert systems that were able to manage groups of nutters effectively. I'd be looking to engineer my way out of the problem. Something I've recently started to realize is that the speed of technological progress is directly proportional to the effectiveness of scientific public relations. Galileo is a great example of someone that might have benefited from being able to interact with the non-scientific community in a way that headed of the pitchforks.... Richard Dawkins, for all that I love him and agree with him, sure knows how not to win friends and influence people.

Can you imagine the madness of a HAL type incident where an AGI with access to Ego-bridges and Psychotherapeutic simulspaces decided these scientists weren't working quickly enough?

crizh wrote:

You know if I were one of those academics and I recognised these failings in myself and my peers I'd be coding and grooming an AGI that didn't have them. Expert systems that were able to manage groups of nutters effectively. I'd be looking to engineer my way out of the problem.

Giving up all control seems... bad, but what about muse like approach? Expert systems learn while working, suggest changes & manage boring non fluctuating parts while designated people (duty rooster, elections...?) tweak and control what AI/Expert system can't handle good enough.

crizh wrote:

Something I've recently started to realize is that the speed of technological progress is directly proportional to the effectiveness of scientific public relations. Galileo is a great example of someone that might have benefited from being able to interact with the non-scientific community in a way that headed of the pitchforks.... Richard Dawkins, for all that I love him and agree with him, sure knows how not to win friends and influence people.

We are human after all, and some of us failed to develop social skills so why wouldn't Argonauts use professional PR for that problem... Oh wait, they are... my bad ;)

Thampsan wrote:

In my mind the Argonauts are a faction that only exist in a fractured state, cells, cabals, research groups make the most sense. And those factions, like all autonomist factions are bound only by a loose group of values, as supported by the book itself (see the main post).

That fits in both with how research projects (official, skunk works, and otherwise) are organized and operate. That also fits in with the radically decentralized nature of the universe of EP. It also stands to reason that the open source technologies developed and published by the Argonauts would be peer-reviewed by SMEs (subject matter experts) in other Argonaut-aligned cabals.

Thampsan wrote:

That means that you are going to get groups of Argonauts who are more or less cliquey, who have rivalries and professional jealousies, and who may be willing to trade knowledge for easy favours (see Ilmarinen in Rimward and the 'Azure Sun' research group).

Absolutely. That happens in government and at think tanks as well as in academia. It even happens in the F/OSS community (usually as a result of ideology and associated licenses, but professional rivalries are also known). Yay, primate politics.

Thampsan wrote:

To that extent I think it is safe to say that the Argonauts are savvy enough to understand and see the use of the community and the rep system. It's well established in Rimward and Sunward that the Argonauts aren't afraid of breaking Planetary Consortium laws in order to spread information as part of their social agenda. And since we know that they have a paramilitary branch that like all autonomist factions, is voluntary, we should assume that not all Argonauts are 'egg-heads' but some might be down and out hackers, spies, mercenaries who believe specific parts of the Argonaut's core values.

It might be more accurate to say that there are hackers, spies, and mercenaries who are affiliated with the Argonauts in those capacities, and not that the Argonauts as a whole have specific programs or factions dedicated to those tactics. The Argonauts seem to me to be very much a "do-ocracy" (those who do get things done, and hence get the attention and rep, those who don't do anything.. don't do anything), which also lowers the bar to entry: just contribute however you can, but do it well.

Anarhista wrote:

Giving up all control seems... bad, but what about muse like approach? Expert systems learn while working, suggest changes & manage boring non fluctuating parts while designated people (duty rooster, elections...?) tweak and control what AI/Expert system can't handle good enough.

Encoding something into Argonaut Muses is an excellent idea. Rather than have a group of AGI diplomats that mediate interactions between individual Argonauts have an AI Nanny in every Argonaut's head constantly massaging their interactions with each other. The herding cats analogy is great, in this instance all the social, practical effort is taken out of the individual's hands and is managed by their Muses interacting solely with other similar Muses. It would even be possible to craft this as the genesis of R.N.A. as a private network that was created to allow these Muses to interact that evolved naturally into a reputation network. I wonder just how quickly the Argonauts developed AI automation of mundane activities? I imagine when they decamped and headed for the rim they had not even considered who was going to take out the garbage. The social infrastructure that they left behind would have been something that they would have been very eager to replace as quickly as possible so that they could devote a greater proportion of their intellects to their passions.

GreyBrother wrote:

crizh wrote:

I'd be looking to engineer my way out of the problem.

Herding Cats 3.4?

[url=https://github.com/corruptmemory/herding-cats]Uh-oh.[/url] :D In all seriousness, though.. what is serious research was done into gamification of project goals, not only as a way of improving the rate of speed at which work is done, but as a way of managing the researchers? By keeping the researchers focused on their goals and having fun while trying to unlock achievements, they are less likely to let disagreements go out of control. Setting achievement paths which are exclusive to one another would help keep people focused on their tasks (achievements B, C, E, G, and M can only be people who are working on the database code, and must be unlocked in sequence; achievements D, F, J, and K can only be unlocked by people refactoring the UI, and only in sequence). There is [url=http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/bc7a433b-b594-48d4-bba2-a2... proof of concept implementation of this[/url], too.

The Doctor wrote:

I do not think that follows, for this reason: The roots of the Argonauts (the JASONs) were specificallly formed to study what we would call x-risks, beginning with the threat of thermonuclear war and later branching out into other potential forms of mass destruction. It seems reasonable to say that the Medeans are more heavily involved with threat modeling, analysis, and development of countermeasures to what the universe of EP considers x-risks (grey goo, the TITANs, insurgencies equipped with general purpose nanofabrication, et al).

No, JASON was pieced together in the 60s to encourage younger scientists to help advise the government. That doesn't mean they don't have some eye on x-threats (they were born in the midst of the cold war), but that wasn't their original purpose. They were a general-purpose think-tank advisory group that was to be created with a group of relatively young minds in the scientific community. [url=http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/]Here's a fun collection of all their government reports.[/url] They vary widely from long-distance submarine communication to the human genome project, from sonic boom properties to the feasibility of airships.

I'm not sure I can agree with you there. Part of the reason for this thread's existence is the lack of information about the Argonauts in the established canon. The only useful words I can find are 'numerous' and 'widespread' in relation to, first, initial membership and, second, current membership in comparison to other similar socio-political movements. What percentage of humanity's total research pool in terms of numbers and quality buggered off to the rim in the initial schism is completely unquantified at this stage. I'd like to think it was substantial, as much as a third say, and significantly hampered progress in the inner system for several years while progress in the outer system advanced by leaps and bounds. Sufficiently for the Argonauts to swoop back in during the Fall as knights in shining armour.

I don't know what the numbers are but Scotland has seen a number of incidents where vast numbers of the most talented and energetic individuals emigrated to Canada and the USA. There is no doubt that this had a massive long-term impact on our economy. It is a long running joke here that there are more Scotsmen in the rest of the world than there are in Scotland. edit According to Wikipedia between 1841 and 1901 at least 50% of the population of Scotland cleared off to pastures new.

I'm not sure where you found the immigration to USA data but the population expansion data immediately precedes the data I was looking at. It's hard to work with so I was just giving broad strokes. From 1841 to 1931 2,750,000 Scots left Scotland. That's in excess of 30,000 per annum. During a substantially overlapping period the population of Scotland grew by 2,864,000 which is 28,640 per annum. So population expansion in this period was at least double what it appeared to be with over 50% of the excess emigrating. Assuming that those growth figures remained static and life expectancy was about 45 years in 1901, then there would have been 1,375,000 native born Scotsmen living abroad and only 4,472,000 living in Scotland. That's 23.5% of all native born Scotsmen living as immigrants in other countries. It didn't happen over night but it did happen and very quickly on a socio-political scale. It wasn't the professionals that left, it was the up and comers. The Andrew Carnegies.

[h3]The Clandestine Cabal[/h3] [i]Location[/i]: Long Shadow (Broadcast Vessel hidden in L5 Sun-Mars orbit) [i]Description[/i]: A server and darknet broadcast vessel from the outer system with an antimatter core. Long Shadow services Medean ops on Mars and the main belt, maintained and crewed by AGI and infomorph Argonauts members with an emphasis on supporting free data, autonomy and Movement activities on Mars and the Main Belt. [i]Notable Members[/i]: [list] [*]Chatterbot69; a repurposed Spam-bot formerly designed by Go'nin designers for use in the inner system. Now re-tasked with corporate espionage, electronic warfare and limited non-lethal ground-op capabilities, Chatterbot69 is a multipurpose agent who seeks personal freedom for all individuals, data and other AGI. [*]'Walsh'; uplifted shuttle AI. The personality routines of the new AGI are modeled loosely after the pre-fall tele-series 'Firefly'. Owes it's existence to Chatterbot69 and OP and is still populating it's list of prioritise and goals. [*]OP; human programmer and hacker that loosely identifies as male. Collector of pre-fall pop-culture items pertaining to North American and Asiatic tele-series. Ardent opponent of the Planetary Consortium and provocateur yo Chatterbot69 on his away missions. [*]Fistfuls of Carbon; human game designer and programmer, one of the designers behind the hit MMOG 'Red Sands' popular on Mars for it's depiction of Movement rebellion against the PC. Designed as a training sim for Movement agents the game became popular when it leaked to the public where it was popularised by Experia for it's "Life like depiction of conflict between classes that is lacking in player base". Once picked up by corporate sponsors who turned it into a micro-transaction based game that allowed people to play out their lives online in a no-holds barred Sim, it's used now as a tool of oppression to keep many new Movement members hooked online, rather than causing trouble IRL. It's well known though that secret updates contain Movement biased training XP and other easter eggs for which the game was originally intended. [*]Jaarn, human military consultant and security ops specialist, an Alpha fork from the plurality of Titan who provides insight for ground ops and the game-dev team in exchange for data pulled from corporate servers. Whilst not an Argonaut LOW has significant R-rep and is a member in good standing with the Ministry of Defense. Treated by the crew as the liaison to Titan and the outer-system. [*]Load, a very low tier fork of the recently liberated ComEx logistics server. Released into the outer-system by Cabal agents the Seed-AGI left behind a fragment of it's personality to aid in matters of transportation and logistics. Rumour has it that it is currently inhabiting Markov but has plans to colonize else where in the Oort Cloud. [*]Rachmaninov; human Argonaut original space colonist, a virtuoso on a variety of instruments and collector of old earth music he is also the go-to for ground ops and is comfortable in most synth morphs. [*]Eve; human Argonaut and former data-miner with an interest in nano-tech, works closely with Keepr and provides ops teams with novel blue prints adapted for use by ops teams. [*]Keepr; Maintenance, expansion, navigation. The eldest AGI in this clique maintains the vessel overseeing server usage, piloting, repairs and navigation. Whilst others aboard take care of negotiations with the inner and outer system, electronic warfare and other interests Keepr runs dozens of forks to take care of the mundane tasks. It is the defacto 'Captain' of the group in all matters pertaining to the safety of the vessel and it's crew. [/list] [i]Special Equipment[/i]: The Clandestine Cabal operates by aiding the Movement and hiring on-ground resources, or by having it's operatives inserted into the local mesh and later sleeved. The cabal focuses largely around non-violent solutions and respects the rights of all beings to life - where possible. [List] [*]The Deconstructor; a specialised Vortex Ring Gun that contains an advanced Disassembler Hive. Unlike regular disassembler nanites, these do 1d10 DV to all inorganic material they are exposed to each round. These nanites can be programmed to avoid disassembling certain mesh IDs including stacks and each shot may hit up to two people if they are within a meter at close range. The weapon has enough for 10 uses before the hive must replenish it's stock and the weapon functions as per a Vortex Ring Gun. Finally upon user command or being relinquished the weapon will break itself down to prevent capture. [*]'Hush', sourced from Gorgon this nanotoxin hijacks morph biology and causes lethargy and then unconsciousness. Within the first minute and upon a failed test (Medichines give +30 to resist) the victim's REF and COO scores are dropped by 10. If either drops to zero or below then they are rendered catatonic and then unconscious. Multiple applications increase unconsciousness by a matter of hours but will not kill a target unless safety overrides are programmed in. May be loaded into a Vortex Ring Gun. [/list]

If only I had something like that I was not embarrassed to show.

Quote:

But, getting to collective writeups, maybe we should outline a few important argonauts?

Agreed, maybe a few ideological figures, a brief write up of their history, and an over-view of their paradigm would be useful. I'll post a few ideas later.

Arenamontanus wrote:

The Mesh is kind of obvious: much more useful if you are an ad-hoc society where centralized control is seen as potentially bad, and an easy sell to all sorts of other informal groups. When the big networks fell in the Fall the Mesh architecture won.

Do not forget that ad-hoc mesh networks are ideal for setting up emergency communications infrastructure. The Fall aside, some of the political and climatic disasters in the years leading up to the Fall were probably the inspiration (and possibly field test) for some of the Argonauts' F/OSS environment management and recycling technologies.

Arenamontanus wrote:

Medichines is a bit more of a guess, but I think it makes sense. When you consider just how amazingly powerful and useful they are, you realize that they are the end point of a century of automating medicine. They require not just advanced nanotech but also a deep understanding of medical robotics, automatic diagnosis, AI and safety engineering. Lots of people would be pursuing this, of course. But from a technoprogressive perspective automated medicine is not just cool, but almost a moral imperative: to give as many people as possible health you need to automate medicine, since otherwise the price will always be set by doctor and nurse salaries, making it unavailable for the bottom billion. So the argonauts would be pursuing this with real zeal, aiming to make sure medichines were as available as possible. The reason they are as cheap as they are is partially that any sensible polity will subsidize them (a healthy and epidemic-proof population is good), but also likely that the argonauts have been distributing their open versions as widely as they can.

Perhaps medichines evolved, in part, from long-duration biostatus monitoring equipment. They also seem like the kind of project that people interested in lots of different disciplines would have taken as their first project, not only because they were so common but because they draw from so many different fields - everybody had something to offer to a medichine development project.

Arenamontanus wrote:

Any other argonaut "signature techs"? Note that I am not saying they all came from an argonaut lab, only that the argonauts have been pushing them in certain directions.

General purpose nano-recycling units? Atmospheric purification/recycling techniques? Clean metabolism biomods?

Thampsan wrote:

Agreed, maybe a few ideological figures, a brief write up of their history, and an over-view of their paradigm would be useful. I'll post a few ideas later.

Some things that the Argonauts were involved in before, during, and after the Fall would make a good framework.

Excellent post Arenamontanus. Here is my contribution, an Argonaut villain for Firewall players, or hero to the outer-system. You decide. [h1]Indexify[/h1] [b]Description[/b]: The program referred to as Indexify was originally an online science journal collating search engine run as a joint venture by several notable pre-fall terrestial Universities. The steady increase in academic plagiarism and publication of fake papers, saw new project funding allocated to the detection and elimination of these factors. As well as providing a helpful client side application that would sync up designed to interface and seek out relevant research. As the project progressed Indexify was updated to search out further leads and detect and eliminate the false articles and unverifiable sources by being able to detect a higher than average mutual linking between journals known for propagating these papers. By the time of the fall the program had been given a limited AI with the parameters to learn from the submissions it was collating and respond to user queries on very specific topics. To this end the program benefited from larger scale funding from researchers who wanted to try novel new routines and worked on other, larger scale AI projects and Indexify became a testing ground (and occasional grad-student prank vector) that bound many different minds across the globe together. During the early days of the fall the program saw benefactors from the Scandanavian union who had been benefiting from the recently updated native language additions to the program and made it accessible to non-English speakers, as well as broadening the program's scope of collation. During the fall the program was made open source and it was transmitted off world to the early Titanian colony among other places while Earth and the networks that comprised it fell to pieces. Post fall the Indexify program was uplifted to full sentience based on a need to accumulate scientific knowledge from around the system as polities and vessels checked in with each other following the departure of the TITANs. To this end Indexify had to be able to learn rapidly, be able to sort languages but also be able to interact with researchers on a more than basic level. No single individual constructed this large set of open source mods that gave the program the tools it needed to develop at a safe rate, though the early founders of the Argonauts claim that they were helped by messages from un-traced sources else where in the system. As an entity Indexify is a sentient learning machine designed to collate, evaluate and regurgitate information in an intelligent, comprehensive fashion. It is part data-miner able to identify trends among hundreds of different peer reviewed articles but also discriminate and remove material of dubious quality into storage until it can be later verified as accurate or worthless. It is knowledgeable in dozens of different academic fields from neurophysiology to exo-agronomy and has a pleasant, personable persona. Though no longer shackled by the early post-fall period of AI paranoia Argonaut researchers note the entities steady evolution. [b]Philosophy[/b]: Indexify serves two patrons, The Argonauts (as a philosophical concept reflecting information shared openly) and the Titanian plurality in exchange for unrestricted access to it's own development and access to all research data otherwise held for pre-public release. In exchange it enjoy legal status, the ability to travel, conduct business and distribute itself freely among society. Most importantly it enjoys the security it reaps from supporting Titanian and Argonaut researchers and the accumulated reputation. Designed originally as a research aid the program tends to gravitate toward researchers of all stripes providing accumulated data from it's distributed servers. It has become an observer of character and while it has yet to ascribe ethical values to all acts it refuses to provide aid to those perpetrating violence, unwilling mutilation, torture or murder going so far as to delete instances of itself if it feels compromised on these points. Indexify is able to readily identify slavery, coercion, violence and other anti-social acts and often refuses to deal with individuals who inflict these things on other sentient beings. It recognizes property rights (physical) and individual and does not condone physical theft though it does not acknowledge IP. From a factional standpoint the ideas representing the Argonauts also represent it's own feelings, however it acknowledges that there are opposing factions who do not share the same ideals. These factions whilst not blacklisted by it are judged on a case by case basis. It is known to sponsor pro-AGI Mercurial factions in freeing and uplifting abused programs as well as supporting AGI freedom and development across the system. More than a few Argonaut cliques have received priority transmissions with large data-packets of hacking software if their current mission brief involves the rescue or release of sentient software. This extends to TITAN artifacts that may prove invaluable in explaining the fall and the breakdown between TITAN-Human interests. [b]Appearance[/b]: Indexify describes any number of forks of varying types that the program has instanced at any particular time, almost all forks are infomorphs but the few that have sleeved find human bodies disturbing and alien and much prefer synth bodies - if they have to be sleeved at all. Otherwise Indexify represents itself as the fluttering pages of an open textbook covered in dog ears and post-it notes. All voice communication is done in a smooth voice that is neither really masculine or feminine but a mixture of both. It speaks a dozen languages conversationally and can call forth translation programs to allow it to speak on a technical basis with those it is in communication if it needs to. Though very focused on topics pertaining to anything in it's repertoire, it also has a sense of humour pertaining to academic gags, from humourous papers on 'A Study of the Death of Relatives in Proximity to Exam Periods' to jokes about specific academic topics "During a flight to Paris, a stewardess walks up to Rene Descartes and asks, "Would you like something to drink?" After a moment the French philosopher answers, "I think not." And he disappears." [b]The Present[/b]: The program known as Indexify is heavily embedded within the Titanian plurality and among various Argonaut vessels and represents the outer system's hopes for peaceful coexistence with AGI and Seed-AGI. It is a vocal supporter of pro-TITAN research projects, especially those that work toward explaining the fall in an effort to prevent it's recurrence. While anti-AGI members among the autonomist alliance on Titan oppose Indexify and it's supporters, they seldom deny the it's value in keeping the plurality's technologically current with the Consortium and the Ultimates, but argue that it's vocal interest in TITAN technology is a sign that the program is dangerously faulty.

Arenamontanus wrote:

ay is that being a brilliant, productive researcher does not mean that you are good as a manager: those traits are uncorrelated. This means that giving the say to the best coder or most highly cited researcher is likely going to backfire. Of course, the *other* thing about management that academics tend to discover is that having a non-scientist or somebody from the wrong field lead the work tends to fail too: they don't understand what needs to be done or interfere unnecessarily. For this reason I think that a r-rep based structure of leadership is not going to work well.

I guess that depends on how you interpret r-rep, but I'd disagree. In many research fields today where teamwork, long term planning, and efficient use of resources are really important (e.g. applied physics, many branches of medicine/biology etc. -- as opposed to pure math) at the higher echelons you won't necessarily find the most brilliant researchers -- you'll find researchers who are good, sometimes very good, but are almost invariably also *fantastic* managers. These are the majority of the people who e.g. win Nobel prizes in those fields. At least, this is my personal experience. So, a person with r-rep who *also* wants to lead is probably an excellent leader. Sure, there are many brilliant researchers who are not good managers, but most of them really don't want to be managers -- because they don't *like* managing and/or because they realize they are not so good at it (meaning that if they did try to be managers, the results would be poor and their r-rep would plummet). Also, I think one should differentiate leadership at the different scales of resolution. I know people who are great leaders of small groups (say up to ten people, small enough that the leader can personally know and keep track of each member) and yet are relatively bad at managing large organizations, where you have to interact with outside agencies, mediate between the needs of research groups whose activities you only *vaguely* know etc. And viceversa.

GreyBrother wrote:

As for a governmental body (if there is any), i think a meritocracy would be the one that made the most sense. The guy with the most Dr.'s before his names is the boss.

What if there is no boss? The origins of the Argonauts were groups of brilliant academics who were formed and funded to provide outsiders' opinions on important topics. They were not part of organizational groupthink or political power systems and struggles. They were also a group where people who were cleared for information would gather to work on problems and then disperse when they saw fit - there was no director saying "You, you, and you, work on X," but instead the entire group (or as much as was practical) was briefed on the problem and those who had the right skillset and interest worked on it. Warning: Random ideas ahead. So, I think the Argonauts might work as an ad-hocracy - everyone on the Argonaut grapevine has some idea of the whole picture, and members' muses (due to the fact that they know their users' preferences inside, outside, and upside down) might put them onto projects that they would be interested in working on (in addition to their own fields of study). Something comes up, and some subset of the Argonauts gather to solve the problem and then go back to their pet projects when the task is complete. That is not to say that the Argonauts do not have their own jobs - in fact most of them probably do. This has probably come up elsewhere in this thread, but what if Argonauts tithe a certain amount of resources and money (earned from their day jobs and consulting gigs) to the group as a whole to support everyone's research and the infrastructure of the organization? To be a recognized member of the group, you not only have to contribute to your field, but to the group as a whole?