Computer Tech in 2150.

So ya wanna know how stuff works these days? Maybe I ain't the best to explain it, but here goes.

Way back in the 2020's, everybody was convinced that using computers was gonna involve direct neural interface, brain-diving into the Matrix, surfing the web with your neurons pretty directly. And honestly, people tried that for a while. But the AI and the tech and the computers ended up getting so much faster than people that it pretty soon turned into suicide to put your brain in there. I'm not even talking about IC (intrusion countermeasures). Just jacking in started frying peoples gray matter with information overload. Nobody could keep up.

So we went back to older ways, kinda. We program daemons and agents and shit, and send them in to do our bidding in cyberspace. So hacking looks like it did back in the 20th, somebody typing and pressing send...cuz they built the daemon or agent or whatever a while back, and just have to give it basic instructions.

Another trope that don't always pan out is the person in the chair. Don't get me wrong, it can be helpful to have somebody back at base running net watch for you, observing their daemons, getting reports, hacking cameras, all that. But the real targets are all hardwired with quantum cables, throwing quarks or some shit back and forth across landlines. Cuz the corps got tired of people just jacking in from the net and stealing their shit. So if you want real paydata, well, ya gotta hack the system on site. So your tech guy is a specialist op, not something different. Still gotta shoot, ya know?

Rumor has it there are folks called savants, who can think fast enough, process info fast enough, to go all Neuromancer on the net. Some claim they can even do it without a deck, just throwing their mind into a system, even a hardwired one. Urban legend. I ain't met a single person who could do any of that.

I mean, VR is still big business. There's games, meetings, shows, all that. For corp cits, mainly, though ya can get bootlegs and second hand hardware in the Between when it falls off a truck. There's stars recording damn near any experience you may wanna have, and you get to feel it like it's happening to you. Some folks retreat in there and never come out, living a life better than what they can get for real. Some die in there cuz they forget to come out and eat, drink, go to the bathroom. It ain't pretty, but I can't blame 'em. The real world is shit, Full Immersion Virtual Entertainment (fives) is a great escape.