#sinder roze | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

warsofasoiaf · 2 years ago

Note

The Data Angels are the last human faction for you to cover in SMAX. Would love your analysis, particularly how they relate to the 1990s concept of internet culture versus how it has actually developed.

Alpha Centauri's Alien Crossfire expansion created radically different societies (with the exception, perhaps, of Foreman Domai and the Free Drones, which is quite familiar to contemporary audiences), an anarchic group based on hacker culture is fairly out there. Mechanically, it's a faction based around the probe team mechanics in a way that not even Morgan can match, but the lore perhaps dates the game almost as much as the early Secret Project "The Human Genome Project," which was launched in 1990 and declared mostly over by 2003. The Data Angels are deeply immersed in early hacker cultures that were found on college campuses and lurking within various Usenet groups.

The Internet was not new during the game's development cycle from 1996 to 1999, but it was radically growing - in 1993 the Internet carried 1% of all information transmitted over two-way telecommunications links, but by 2000 it was over half. We take it for granted today with near worldwide wi-fi, but the world even 30 years ago was radically different to the world today, a truly transcendent transformation not seen since the advent of atomic warfare. With the rise of computers came the rise of computer programmers, many of whom were engineers that saw the limitations of computer programs as engineering problems to be solved, not requiring brute force lines but creativity in the code. These individuals often chafed at the stolid, traditional method of computer programming in favor of creative, free-thinking experimentation, pushing the boundaries and restrictions of what modern computers were capable of. If traditional programming was the "the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge," then these free-thinking hackers, as they called themselves, could conceive of themselves as "the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries," perhaps not always the most accurately given that many were experimenters, categorizers, archivers, and most importantly, sharers.

Hackers developed their own unique subculture, blending a disdain for authority, sharing of their own created code, and encouragement of others to add on to their own code (forking). One overriding and abiding ethos was that information must be free to permeate throughout the net, available to all, and that such practices would benefit mankind. Even the 'jazz' that Sinder Roze remarks on is found in hacker culture, there was a strong current of both humor and style in hacker culture. Steven Levy even mentioned in his 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution that "to qualify as a hack, the feat must be imbued with innovation, style and technical virtuosity." Elegance and creativity in form was essential to qualify as a hacker, and not just a computer programmer with exceptional skill. This itself gave hackers a strong element of counterculture, of deliberately being different and being themselves, of never compromising and letting their code speak their worth for them. The Data Angels are this culture taken and expanded to a full society, a full nation of free thinkers and eccentrics who are true to themselves and express themselves in the way that they love, and their code is what determines how worthy they are (many of the Data Angels follow Roze because of how good she is as a hacker, an anarchic aristocracy - not the medieval conception of the word but the literal Greek definition, rule by the skilled). This is just like jazz music itself, improvisation, to take something and make it your own, is critical to jazz. The Data Angels take the bebop era and turn it to everything in the code, singing the body electric in 1's and 0's. At its best, the Data Angels is mutually supporting even when they differ, radically free, and celebrating of its differences.

"Ideology is a tool of power. Anyone who dangles a bright, shiny ideal in front of your eyes is likely trying to distract you from the chains they're about to snap around your wrists." -Datatech Sinder Roze, Infobop

Of course, like with every other faction that adheres to a strong ideology (which is all of them), Sinder Roze is a massive hypocrite when it all comes down to adhering even to the core beliefs of the hacker ethos. Roze doesn't believe in information freedom, she believes that all information should be free for the Data Angels. They will penetrate their adversary's computer networks and take their data, but not share the technology - they will hoard it for themselves. In this, they become every bit the corporate programmer that hackers profess to despise, the ones who copyright their programs and refuse to share the source code, even when every sense of profit is long gone. Roze takes all data and tags it for later use, which had its own implications in the 1990's but takes on a terrifying dimension in the 2020's with digital privacy and the rise of China's digital surveillance state. Privacy is a key topic in computer ethics discussions today, and Roze's cheerfully disregards it as irrelevant, save perhaps for herself. This itself is one of the negatives of anarchy, that it often devolves into strongmanism or mob rule, where the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must. If you don't want your data stolen, then you'd best be a better computer engineer that can build a better firewall (or develop the Hunter-Killer algorithm), otherwise Roze will use your data however she wants and you'll just have to eat it. This was the case in the Spanish Civil War, where anarchists would surround farms and force them to turn over their grain under threat of execution as a Falangist or Francoist collaborator, or wait until the farmer left the grounds for any reason and occupy their home, seizing it as theirs. While Roze talks of ideology as a tool of power, she herself uses ideology as a tool of one herself, even if she forbids the pursuit of Power for power's sake.

Much like with Cha Dawn forbidding Wealth instead of Free Market because Deidre already had the Green/Free Market dynamics, Roze forbids Power instead of Police State despite her strong democratic ideals. Lore-wise, Roze would probably deeply despise of the Human Hive, whose brutal serfdom is deeply at odds with Roze's anarchist beliefs, and the Lord's Believers, whose fundamentalist approach censors information and dislikes dissent (unless its Miriam herself, dissenting against things like Zak's nanorobots). However, she'd also run afoul of Morgan, whose copyrighted and monopolized MorganNet software is the antithesis of her hacker spirit (although mechanically they don't cross paths) and the Spartans (who value Power in a way that Roze forbids).

Governmentally, Roze favors democratic governance in a way reminiscent of social anarchic thought. Particularly after the first few years after Planetfall and the difficulties of survival begin to fade, using informational technology, from network nodes to telepathy once it gets researched, would establish a form of direct democracy reminiscent of Iain Bank's The Culture series of books, albeit without the all-knowing power of the Minds (and that's all I'll say lest I rant about the Culture). However, Roze is not forbidden from taking the other choices available. A Police State runs close to modern-day China, a digital surveillance state where all behavior is categorized and filed away like any other piece of information, used to predict the point where free-thinking turns to dissent. This could help to corral the decentralized nature of the Data Angels and likely involves as many or more internal security personnel manned to the Network Nodes than physical security on the streets. Whether Roze rescinds it as a temporary measure or maintains it as a "temporary measure" common to other tinpot dictators is up to her (and the player). Fundamentalist thought likely takes Roze to enacting both information security and the notion of all information must be free to the Angels to the hilt, indoctrinating the people in the ideas that taking all information not known is a moral and social good. There is no need to invest in labs when the information is out there. A Fundamentalist Roze runs on copyright theft and manufacturing knock-off goods, ordering take-out when others are cooking.

Economically, nothing is off limits to Roze, and this is probably where her particular flavor of anarchism comes. Planned economies likely end up having a large degree of social property in the vein of social anarchism and access to tools with a high degree of worker self-management, causing inefficient production shortfalls but establishing a wide range of industry (and ideally, new forms of self-discovery and expression). A Free Market Roze embraces individualist anarchism and private property and becomes an ancap jazz queen. Private defense and insurance extends to the cyber realm, where skill is free to flourish and compete to continually prove itself the best or fall to a new competitor. Unfortunately, this could even result in societal collapse to drone riots with any sort of military unit away from the base, forcing Roze to truly rely on her maxim: "War is war; destruction is destruction. You think this is obvious. But war is not destruction, it is victory. To achieve victory, simply appear to give your opponent what he wants and he will go away, or join you in your quest for additional power." After all, if she can't send an army, she'll have to use her probes. Green Roze likely embraces eco-anarchism (though not anarcho-primitivism) as she seeks to accommodate even the Planet's mind into her society. This is both idealistic (Planet offers such a unique perspective on existence) and practical (a Planet not dealing with industrial waste is one that's not sending boils of Mind Worms to eat the Data Angels' brains). With the advent of telepathy, and the evolution to transcendii, new forms of thought become possible, and a closeness with the code is something that is entirely new - not the crude cyborgs of Mind/Machine Interface but those who have transcended humanity into running on the datalinks or in Planet's consciousness itself (and with the Ascent to Transcendence, both), and the early elements of this are found in accommodating Planet and exploring the planetary consciousness of Centauri Empathy.

For values, Roze is prohibited from Power, meaning that on some level, she does not celebrate a culture of strength. Power can be subverted, and the anarchic mind sees force as anathema to mutual gain. Power is ultimately hollow. However, what Roze can value can determine what her society values. Knowledge is the discovery, the new and novel that comes from an unchained mind (imagine Francis Crick on LSD developing the double-helix model of DNA as an example). Knowledge Data Angels might see chaotic labs as a scientist announces "I've got an idea" and others flock to see, then others fork off that research until something coheres. Wealth is instead the valuation of others. What do others think is worthwhile, and how can I provide that value in the context of the mutual aid that characterizes anarchism. After all, if the fundamental question is "how can I help you and you help me," then you saying "I want this," is exactly how I can help you.

For a Future Society, Sinder Roze looks like she would favor Eudaimonia, the ultimate end for the anarchic society where everyone does express themselves. This is the end-game that shows Roze meeting her utopian anarchist ideals in free expression. What really mattered was the jazz all along. Eudaimonia is the jazz, where everything looks as you want it to look, and all others cannot help but marvel. Cybernetic Roze ends up deciding that really it's the code that matters, and as AI becomes better and better, it becomes a better hacker possessed of even more jazz that Roze herself. How could it not, when it thinks so much faster, on so many more cycles per second. The only solution to stay on top, of course, is to further push herself and transcend, and the jazz is the code. Thought Control is the fugue, a betrayal of the anarchic state as ultimately unworkable and the devolution into strongmanism that has characterized anarchic states in the past. Everyone simply has to believe they are free, regardless of whether they're not. Everything looks the way Roze wants it to look, and all others cannot help but marvel, for they can do nothing else.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#sid meier's alpha centauri

17 notes · View notes