Editing Mesh (section)

= Mesh Capabilities =
The mesh, as it exists in Eclipse Phase, is only possible thanks to major developments made in computer and communication technologies and nanofabrication. Wireless radio transmitters and receivers are so unobtrusively tiny that they can literally be factored into anything. As a result, everything is computerized and connected, or at least tagged with a radio frequency ID (RFID) chip. Even food is tagged with edible chips, complete with expiration date and nutritional content. Other communications mediums, such as laser and microwave links, add to the information flow. Data storage technology has advanced to such high levels that even an individual user’s surplus storage capacity can maintain an amount of information easily surpassing the entire 20th-century internet. Lifeloggers can literally record every moment of their life and never fear about running out of room. The amount of data that people carry around in the mesh inserts in their head or in portable ecto personal computers is staggering.
Processing capabilities also exist at hyper-efficient levels. Even massive supercomputers are a thing of the past when modest handheld devices can fulfill almost all of your needs, even while simultaneously running a personal AI assistant, downloading media, uploading porn, and scanning thousands of newsfeeds. Within the mesh network, devices that near their processing limits simply share the burden with devices around them, creating a massively distributed framework that in some ways is like an entire supercomputer to itself, shared by everyone.
Similarly, transmission capacity now far exceeds most citizens’ definition of need. Anyone born within the last several generations has always lived in a world in which hyper-realistic, multi-sensory media of nearly any length is available for instantaneous download or upload from anywhere. Massive databases and archives are copied back and forth with ease. Bandwidth is such a non-issue that most people forget it ever was. In fact, given the sheer amount of data available, finding the information or media you’re looking for takes considerably longer than downloading it. The mesh is also never down. As a decentralized network, if any one device is taken offline, connections merely route around it, finding a path via the thousands if not millions of available nodes. Similarly, the entire mesh behaves like a peer-to-peer network, so that large transfers are broken into manageable chunks that take independent routes. In fact, most users maintain personal torrent archives that are publicly accessible and shared. Private networks still exist, of course. Some are physically walled away behind closed-access wired networks or even wireless-inhibiting infrastructure that keep a network isolated and contained. Most, however, operate on top of the public mesh, using encrypted tunneling protocols that provide private and secure communications over unsecured networks. In other words, these private networks are part of the mesh along with everything else, but only the participants can interact with them thanks to encryption, user authentication, and message integrity checking. With the factionalization of transhumanity, attempts to unify software into standard formats have still failed. However, different operating systems or protocols are rarely an obstacle anymore due to easily accessible conversion tools and AI-aided compatibility oversight.

=== Solarchive Search: Ecto(-link) ===
A very popular brand of mobile multifunctional personal digital assistant before the Fall, the ecto name became a synonym for handheld personal computers in the Mesh Age. Standard implanted computers are also sometimes referred to as endos to reflect the difference between an external and an internal device.
No matter if ecto or endo, modern computers are governed by an operating system (OS), a multifunctional suite of programs that includes media tools, a mesh browser, locator, socializing programs (messenger, socnet updater), cartography and navigation software, language translation software, and similar software tools. OS designs are highly customizable, allowing plug-and-use add-ons for whatever additional software and gadgets are desired. Typically, the user’s muse (personal AI assistant) facilitates software interactions.
The ecto itself is typically the size of 20th-century credit card and can be molded and shaped into different forms due to smart material construction. They are often worn as jewelry or clothing accessories, particularly bracelets. The user interface varies according to user preference. Wireless-enabled contacts and earbuds equip users who lack mesh implants, enabling them to experience augmented reality and the ecto’s AR control interface. Standard entoptic control interfaces are also available via wireless radio, skinlink, and direct ﬁberoptic line.

=== Sidebar: Legacy of the Titans ===
Given the technical capabilities of modern personal computers, supercomputers and cutting-edge wired broadband are not needed. But there is another reason they are avoided: the TITANs. Mainframes, hive-mind clusters, and massively parallel distributed computing parallel hive-mind systems are all considered potential dangers in Eclipse Phase, as they possess sufficient processing power and data capacity to enable a seed AI and another potential hard takeoff singularity. Some habitats go so far as to outlaw such systems completely under the severest of penalties: ﬁnal death including the deletion of all backups and recent forks, in most cases.
Those supercomputers that habitats do allow are “hard networks” that control a habitat’s most crucial systems like orbit maintenance thrusters, life support, communications, power, or cutting-edge hypercorp R&D projects. These systems are typically physically wired, heavily monitored, and locked down in electronic data processing centers with strong access restrictions and ruthless real-world security measures. Similarly, AIs themselves are quite often heavily restricted, and it is not unusual for AGIs to be outright banned, especially in the inner system and Jovian Republic. Most intelligent programs are limited with programmed growth restraints, speciﬁcally designed to prevent them from becoming self-upgrading.

== Meshing Technologies ==
Almost all biomorphs in the solar system are equipped with basic mesh inserts—implanted personal computers. These implants are grown in the brain via non-intrusive nanosurgery. The processor, wireless transceiver, storage devices, and other components are directly wired to the user’s cerebral neuronal cells and cortical centers responsible for language, speech, and visual perception among others. Thought-to-communication emulations (so called transducing) enables the user to control the implant just by thinking and to communicate without vocalizing. Input from the mesh inserts is transmitted directly into the brain and sometimes perceived as augmented reality, overlaid on the user’s physical senses. In a similar vein, the mesh inserts installed in synthmorphs and pods are directly integrated with their cyberbrains (creating a potential security concern as cyberbrains are vulnerable to hacking).
External devices called ectos are also used to access the mesh, though these are growing increasingly rare given the prevalence of mesh inserts. Ecto interface options include haptic interfaces like touch-display controls, bracelets or gloves that detect arm, hand, or finger movements (virtual mouse and keyboards), eye tracking and blink control, body scanning grids (body axis control or all-limb controls for non-humanoids), voice controls, and more. Sensory information is handled via lenses, glasses, earplugs (subdermal bone-vibrating speakers), bodysuits, gloves, nose plugs, tongue dams, and other devices that are wirelessly linked to (or physically plugged into) the ecto.

== Information Overload ==
The mesh contains massive amounts of personal and public information shared by users, a digital commons of news, media, discourse, knowledge, environmental data, business, and culture. Transhumans embrace the mesh as a tool for exchange, communication, and participation with other users, both local and far away. As such, the mesh is an up-to-date, authoritative source on all transhuman knowledge and activities. Not everything online is available for free, of course, except perhaps in the autonomist zones. Quite a bit of proprietary data is kept off the grid in secure storage or sequestered away in private networks. Some of this is for sale, and heavily encumbered with digital restrictions—software, media, nanofabrication blueprints, skillsofts, etc. A thriving open source movement offers free and open source alternatives to much proprietary data, however, and numerous digital piracy groups deal out cracked versions of proprietary material, despite pressure from some authorities. Other data is simply secured from competitive interests (hypercorp research projects) or is an extremely private affair, such as ego backups.

=== Spimes ===
Along with the accumulated data of transhuman affairs, the mesh is also cluttered with information derived from untold numbers of wireless-capable sensor-enabled devices that continuously update the mesh with their location, sensor recordings, and other data. Colloquially called “spimes,” these location-aware, environment-aware, self-logging, self-documenting objects broadcast their data to anyone who cares to listen. Since visual, auditory, and other sensors are absurdly tiny and inexpensive, they are ubiquitously incorporated into nearly every object or product a person might wear, apply, use, or internalize. This allows almost any user to reach out through the mesh and gather environmental data and ambient sensor recordings from a specific location (or at least public locales—private areas typically block such signals or slave them to a local AI that filters their output).

=== Surveillance, Privacy and Sousveillance ===
While spimes are easily trackable, they also contribute to an environment of universal surveillance. Between spimes, microsensors, ubiquitous security systems, and the recording capabilities of the mesh inserts used by almost everyone, just about everything is recorded. Factor in the availability of mesh-tracking, facial recognition, rep/social networks, and other data mining software, and it rapidly becomes clear that privacy is an outdated concept. Special considerations must be embraced by anyone that seeks to mask their identity or cover their movements.
Alternately, off-the-shelf looks common with some morphs (especially synthmorphs and pods) allow a user to blend in with the masses. Though in part this may seem an Orwellian surveillance nightmare, the abundance of recording tech actually works as “sousveillance” (watching from below), serving a role in making everything transparent and putting checks on abuses of power.
Authoritarian regimes tread carefully, as they are also universally monitored, despite their attempts to control information flow. Many people also willing participate in this open “participatory panopticon.” With nearly infinite storage capacity, dedicated lifeloggers record every moment of their lives and share it for others to experience.

=== Sidebar: Information at Your Fingertips ===
The following information is always available for most mesh users in a normal habitat:

==== '''Local Conditions''' ====

* Local maps showing your current location, annotated with local features of personal interest (according to your personal preferences and ﬁ lters) and your distance from them/directions to them. Details regarding private and restricted areas (government/hypercorp areas, maintenance/security infrastructure, etc.) are usually not included.
* Current habitat life support (climate) conditions including atmosphere composition, temperature.
* Current solar system and habitat orbit maps with trajectory plots, communication delays.
* Local businesses/services, directions, and details.

==== '''Local Mesh''' ====

* Public search engines, databases, mesh sites, blogs, forums, and archives, along with new content alerts.
* Syndicated public newsfeeds in a variety of formats, ﬁltered according to your preferences.
* Sensor/spime (mostly audio-visual) feeds from any public area of the habitat.
* Private network resources (including tactical nets).
* Automatic searches for new online references to your name and other subjects of interest.
* E-tags pertaining to local people, places, or things.
* Facial/image recognition searches of public mesh/archives to match a photo/vid still.

==== '''Personal Information''' ====

* Morph status indicators (medical and/or mechanical): blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, white cell count, nutrient levels, implant status and functionality, etc.
* Location, functionality, sensor feeds, and status reports of your possessions (via sensors and transmitters in these possessions).
* Access to one’s life-spanning personal audio-visual/XP archive.
* Access to one’s life-spanning personal ﬁle archive (music, software, media, documents, etc.).
* Credit account status and transactions.

==== '''Social Networks''' ====

* Communications account status: calls, messages, ﬁles, etc.
* Reputation score and feedback.
* Social network status, friend updates.
* Updated event calendar and alerts.
* The public social network proﬁles of those around you.
* The location and status of those nearby and involved in the same AR games as you.