From:	Mark Fender markf@******.com
Subject:	Technoshamans (Not Otaku)
Date:	Wed, 11 Aug 1999 10:30:27 -0500

> In a message dated 8/10/99 3:34:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> markf@******.com
> writes:
>
> > Magic and tech meet in very limited ways in SR. The only two examples I
> can
> > think of are otaku (which technically aren't magical but the principles
>
> they
> > operate on do defy realism) and cybermancy.
>
>
> I would actually say that those two examples aren't really magic and tech
> meeting at all. They are working in close proximity in one case, but not
> exactly interacting.
>
> Here's the way I see it:
>
> Cybermancy: Cyberware crammed into a human body to the point of death
> from
> essence loss. The cybermantic rituals create a kind of "negative essence"
> or
> black-hole soul. This binds and grounds itself to the cyberzombie, and
> keeps him/her essentially alive. But, the magic never interacts with the
> cyberware or "tech". It's the process of creating a soul for a dying
> human
> being. For instance, you couldn't exact cast cybermantic rituals on a
> body
> made just out of cyberlimbs and parts, that was never once a man.
>
Well, it never really interacts, but what they're describing stomps several
laws of reality into the ground, hence the 'magic' moniker.

> Otaku: Otaku are human beings with their brains reprogrammed by an AI.
> No
> magic at all involved. It always seemed to me like a heightening of a
> human's natural holographic bicomputer analog and a sort of induced
> autism.
>
Uh. "Natural holographic biocomputer?" "Induced autism?". Sounds like
magic
to me.



> -Twist