Timeline 2.0
Misc Topics
This is just some information which I think will be useful to the players.
Enhanced Reality
Nanotechnology
General Topics
Various Links
The Law & You
What a can of worms, eh?
Okay, here's a rundown of new stuff that's illegal ANYWHERE: Moriarti Complex nanofacs, ordering something from a Moriarti Complex nanofac, military weapons in non-military hands (mostly smart bullets, soldier bugs, anything labelled "heavy artillery", explosives), riot weapons in non-State hands (mostly paralysis masers, restrainers, sonics, blackouts), Class C addictive anything, hacking into other people's MGs, corporate espionage & "stealing" patent-based IP, human slavery, using an AI to commit crimes.
Hackers
There are people out there who will figure out ways around any system. They're called hackers, and most people wish they'd just go away and die. The problem is the degree of vulnerability the system has. Not that the security isn't tight, because it is. But a hacker, given enough time and dedication, can crack any system.
The problem is that a hacker can do so much damage today that just the risk that they might is almost enough to put them in jail. At least, in the current political climate, it is.
PHOTOG
Dotcams: A camera can fit megapixel resolution into a few square millimeters. These can be built into the surface of low-velocity bullets, robot "flies" or "wasps", or even scattered like grains by hand. A typical dotcam has a memory limit of about a gigabyte, or about 30 megapixel, 32-bit color images. Most can be built with short range radio broadcast, but this WILL reveal their location to anyone checking for it. Dotcams are very cheap (typically $0.25 each). Note that if quality can be degraded (shifting to compressed image formats, for example), the number of images possible rises dramatically, to around 10:1.
Fly dotcam ($1 each): This is the standard photog rig. A house-fly sized ornithopter with built in 16 megapixel dotcam, a top speed of about 2mph, and a battery lifetime of a half-hour (or three days in "rest mode"). It contains 10GB of extra memory, making it a bit heavier than a normal dotcam, but also capable of taking 20 high resolution images on its own. Instead of the extra memory, it can have a tightbeam radio broadcaster, sending over Webnet to the operator's own hard drives (effectively limitless video recording). Fly dotcams can manage 10 frames per second.
Wasp dotcam ($2 each): Built similar to the fly, the wasp is large and highly visible (about the size of the top digit of your thumb), and thus not well suited to espionage. However, it is useful for legitimate photography. It has a high resolution, stereo dotcams at the front, a top speed of about 2mph, and a battery lifetime of several hours (or several days in "rest mode"). It contains a full, fingernail-sized computer (giving it nearly limitless recording time), a full Webnet connection, detailed programmability and drone control protocols, sound mic, and even a tiny speaker.
The Actual Timeline
Timeline is an attempt to produce a detailed, plausible future history for use in my near-future sci-fi campaigns. It is also a campaign I am running with my players, although the setting is not really finished.