Still, the ambiance would have gained in having at least Chinese sounding names for some thing. Maybe I am over sensible over this because English isn't my native language (it is French) but Eclipse Phase does give a big impression that US is the dominating culture in the setting. I didn't get this impression while reading Transhuman Space where some items and factions have clearly Chinese names.

jackgraham wrote:

I think there was something confusing about the way we wrote up languages, because people keep posting stuff where they seem to think Arabic is the most widely spoken language in the Solar System, when in fact it's Mandarin.

If it's any consolation, I never got the impression that any language or culture held a hegemony over the Sol system. I generally assumed that English was the [i]lingua franca[/i] of the hypercorps, at least, but the book seems quite clear in saying that multiple languages continue to exist after the Fall, and that language barriers have largely been opened up by translation software. I find the various 'what happened to culture X?' questions a bit odd. The story would seem to be the same for all countries--the lucky few escaped into space, the rest got painfully killed or enslaved during the Fall. More people escaped from rich areas like India, China, North America, and Europe than did those from Latin American and Sub-Saharan Africa, but most of the larger populations of humanity have some representatives among transhumanity. They mostly just don't care about that stuff anymore.

I think so too, Octopi, and think it would make prime material for a sourcebook of its own. Or, at least, to be treated in the Sunward one. Or who knows, an Earth Sourcebook?

Somewhere in the book, I think it says that Mandarin is the most common language spoken, but I could be wrong (at work, no books). But that passage is misleading. I'm intending to treat Mandarin and Arabic as the most common first languages, with English as the language of trade. Anyway, there's another dimension to the "what happened to culture X" question. People tend to group with those from the same culture. Even with translator programs, it will be easier to communicate with people who share a language, and going beyond language, people who share idioms and customs tend to congregate. If we know that a lot of Chinese people ended up on Mars, we know that Martian culture should probably have some Chinese elements.

Another angle to this is which governments-in-exile exist and matter. We know the government of East Timor hangs out at the Stills in Phelan's Recourse. But what about the US or Chinese government? Sure, their real power has likely become very small, but they might still have command codes, act as interesting ethnic mobs :-) or rallying points for networks. At the Fall there were probably enough politicians and senior bureaucrats in space (or with tickets to the first escape shuttles) that many governments would be able to reform - at least formally. In my game, while making up the back story of a character I offhandedly mentioned that there exists a Chinese government in a station above Luna, claiming to be the legal continuation of the PRC. The character (a military AGI swarmanoid) did not acknowledge their supremacy because they did not have the proper authentication codes.

UpliftedOctopi wrote:

Perhaps I missed something. I understand the re-instantiated account for the existence of rednecks in space.

To be clear, "redneck" as used in EP does not refer to southern/rural Americans, it refers to rural Martians, no matter their ethnicity. It's a re-appropriated term given that Mars is of course the red planet (and the fact that some people probably still consider the Chinese, who made up a large part of the Martian population, to be "reds" despite not even being remotely communist anymore).

UpliftedOctopi wrote:

Jupiter's moons account for, well the bourgeoisie pricks.

The Jovian Republic has North American influences, but it also has a large Central/South/Latin American component.

UpliftedOctopi wrote:

But certain cultures appear to have been somewhat phased out. Pure population density wise China and India and similarly heavily populated areas SHOULD make up for a large part of those who made it to space.

I think if you read a little more carefully, you'll see that we do lean towards this in the core book. It's definitely something we discussed in our original development notes, our notes to artists, and even expressed in small ways like with the sample characters. It is also something that we address more directly in Sunward. While on one hand we quite definitely had in mind that Asian countries had a more integral role in colonizing space, and that Americans and Europeans were not dominant, there is also the competing fact that ethnic and national influences are dying out. When anyone can look Chinese or Indian (and in fact most morphs designs do tend to steer towards East Asian looks), and anyone can slot of language soft or easily translate a language in real-time, the ties that bind such communities together--and the barriers that keep them isolated from other communities--start to unravel. Certainly shared experiences and backgrounds still do a lot to aggregate that sense of tribal identity, but you can no longer assume that the people you meet who look and/or speak like you actually share that perspective. And if you sleeve into something different, others from your tribe are not going to relate to you as much. To some degree the mesh and social networks will counteract this erosion of ethnic identity, as there is a tendency for some online groups to reinforce their behaviors and identities even more so, but this is counteracted by the ability of the mesh to bypass artificial social barriers. In any case, this is something we consciously made an effort to play up in EP. (It's also worth noting that the entities like the Planetary Consortium also discourage adherence to old ethnic/national ties because they advocate sweeping Earth and its history under the rug and creating a new shared identity and manifest destiny for transhumanity.)

Scottbert wrote:

Page 181, sidebar: "The ten most common languages in the solar system by speaking populations are: Arabic, Cantonese, English, French, Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish." The phrasing sounds like you're about to list languages 'by speaking populations', that is, in descending order by how many speakers each language has. Only on the second or third reading do you realize that it is in fact alphabetical order... Perhaps changing the order in errata and the pdf and next printing to give the useful information of which languages have the bigger speaking population would be a good idea?

This was already clarified in the last errata. The original intent was to say that the languages listed were the ten with the largest speaking populations, not that they were listed in order by population.

Arenamontanus wrote:

Another angle to this is which governments-in-exile exist and matter.

This is covered in the Planetary Consortium chapter of Sunward. It is noted that a significant portion of world leaders and their immediate regimes fell victim to the TITANs. Whether this was an intentional effort by the TITANs to surgically strike at transhumanity's elites or a more insidious effort by certain entities to ensure that there would be less resistance in establishing a new off-planet power structure like the Planetary Consortium is left to the conspiracy theorists to argue about :) Many of those that survived were pressured into joining the Consortium, though it's still conceivable that many still exist, though with little influence or power. We briefly discuss the Israeli govt-in-exile in another chapter, for example.

UpliftedOctopi wrote:

I await the arrival of Sunward with baited breath. Thank you for explaining.

Sure thing. Sunward is in proofreading now, so it's getting close to going to print.

UpliftedOctopi wrote:

Was Jaques Ellul an influence at all? If not I strongly suggest "The Technological Society" by him (book, not movie).

I'm not familiar with him, but I can't speak for the other folks involved. I'll take a look, thanks.

Arenamontanus wrote:

Actually, I think many H+ people just don't notice how opposed some of their visions are. I'm increasingly seeing a tension between the optimists who think that we should charge ahead and the pessimists who are concerned with existential risks (it is particularly obvious in the AGI community). In our institute we often joke that we are becoming transluddites. James Hughes (who is pretty much the definition of a H+ insider) has some interesting views too on tensions: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/hughes20100105/ Fukuyama mainly collects various kinds of sceptical arguments (egalitarian concerns, reduction of authenticity, whether it would work, human nature etc) and presents them. Not in itself a great analysis, but it has been important because of his centrality in the public sphere. Perhaps a more interesting (if IMHO not terribly convincing) critic is Michael Sandel, who argues we need to accept the given for psychological and communitarian reasons. His communitarian approach might be a fun take on a "liberal" version of the Jovian Junta: they do not have to be bible-thumping conservatives.

Not to mention that there are many disagreements over simpler concepts invoked in transhumanism, such as human rights. Some feel that privacy should remain a right while others believe that it is an outdated concept belying our instincts of territorialism. Not all transhumans believe in horizontal democracy, and many have different stances on things like the right to bear arms. I even know a couple people who are transhumanists, but remain spiritual. Much like any group of people, I think they run the gamut. "Transhumanist" is just the most general term for all the people who believe that the human condition can be improved through technology.

nick012000 wrote:

Why, there might even be one on this very forum! ;) :P

I figured as much, but I thought it should be noted that spiritual transhumanists are common enough that I even found some in my part of the world, despite how rare transhumanists are, as a whole, where I am. On a secondary note, I think I should point out that I do remember a Christian transhuman RPG being published on the net, though I don't know what happened to it since then. It was called Metalface. Interesting stuff in that game.

Arenamontanus wrote:

Another angle to this is which governments-in-exile exist and matter. We know the government of East Timor hangs out at the Stills in Phelan's Recourse. But what about the US or Chinese government?

I think there was mention of "North American government" during the Fall. I presume its remains and some of South American nations are those who founded Jovian Republic. I think we also shouldn't assume that USA was by the time of the Fall in top position among countries on Earth.

Extrasolar Angel wrote:

I think there was mention of "North American government" during the Fall. I presume its remains and some of South American nations are those who founded Jovian Republic. I think we also shouldn't assume that USA was by the time of the Fall in top position among countries on Earth.

Actually, the Jovian Republic only consumed the more conservative aspects of the United States. It is essentially a combination of South American dictatorships and the Republican Party.

UpliftedOctopi wrote:

@Decivre Do you know where that is in the source material? I'm starting a new ep group in two weeks, would be nice to know.

Page 75 details the Jovian Republic's structure pretty well. Also, look up page 98 to see some interesting references to Republican history in the form of the Junta's names for Jupiter's moons.