I don't think the fall set back technology that much. The reason is that the technological elite tended to be saved - they had cortical stacks, they were important enough to evacuate. It is not inconceivable that TITANs targeted some people because they "knew too much", but the bulk of know-how likely survived. This is very different from a disaster like a nuclear war, where one would expect more professionals than non-professionals to be hurt since cities would be targeted. And technological blueprints tend to be well backed up off-site - in this case likely off-planet. That said, in practice technology after the Fall has been recovering. To make advanced products you need more than just blueprints and a few engineers. You need an infrastructure that can provide the materials, tools and services needed - and that was severely hurt in the Fall. In fact, if the hypercorps had not survived so *suspiciously* well, it is likely that transhumanity would have been in very dire straits. So a lot of current technological development is recovery, but there is also plenty of innovation in the light of new needs and the desire to avoid certain dangerous technology paths. Hmm, that off-site backup thing suggests a good old treasure hunt: Imagination Consulting was a huge simspace/XP design and engineering firm before the Fall. They were wiped out, but now somebody has found a few old files suggesting they had a backup server on the asteroid 34351 Decatur. That server is likely to contain some yummy stuff: vintage media, simspace and AI actor templates for beloved online entertainments, marketing algorithms and special effects software. Perhaps even ego backups of key company members. Or dangerous blackmail material, evidence that a currently big hypercorp had foreknowledge of the Fall or an inactive corporate seed AGI. Getting through the by now obsolete defenses and encryption might just be the start of the trouble...

OneTrikPony wrote:

However, I think the real problem happened due to a lack of funding. The blow to the ecconomy killed scientific growth. It's private corps that are driving research to a larger and larger degree.

Looking through Sunward I am struck by the sheer number of research stations mentioned, often run by the hypercorps or Argonauts. Even if these are the *only* big research settings they still seem (compared to population numbers) to be doing a lot of research. Given the agenda of the PC and many other factions it also seems that they would sponsor a lot of research.

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Also there's the problem that pure research doesn't happen very fast unless it's supported by governments or has percievable near term marketability.

It is debatable what triggers progress in pure research. While the current popular view is that companies are too short-sighted to do it, governments also seem pretty keen on short-term results (just ask any researcher looking for grant money). Pure research breakthroughs are rare and strangely clustered; they do require some peace of work and freedom to think, but beyond that there are few reliable patterns. Maybe science would be accelerated if there were more independently wealthy gentleman-scientists working in their own mansions (historically per capita this has been very productive). We truly don't know.

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Who knows what Monolith Enterprises (p. 72,74) was working on befor the fall? It makes me smile to think that Starware and Omnicore are each holding half of a ticket to Lighthugger tech (SW p.88) and refuse to Cooperate to get there.

Maybe this is just what the TITANs/exsurgent virus wants? Monolith was coming too close to building functional and uncontrollable starships, so they had to be split. The ongoing rivalry is being fed by the remnants of the Fall, and anybody else who gets too close to make a lighthugger will also suddenly find themselves in trouble.