As much a tool as a status symbol, you can tell a lot about someone from the tech at their fingertips. Though technology has pervaded all facets of life, there is a strange marriage of the painfully old and radically new co-existing in the city, reflecting the social/financial hierarchy and class gaps between the rich and poor castes whose needs are so different. The juxtaposition is jarring, but adds to the mystique and timelessness of a city trapped in the past and longing for a future it will never see.
FUNCTIONAL ODDITIES : For most living beneath the 100th floor, technology is merely functional. Old, after-market clunkers in truth, yet prized as precious commodities refurbished with spare parts and care. Many have been handed down among family or communally shared among neighbors and friends. These analog gadgets mostly predate the Blackout and reek of the technophobia systemic in older generations, distrustful of digital technology and reluctant to allow artificial intelligence to think for them or perform more than simple tasks and menial mathematics.
There are still conveniences like voice-print interfaces and vidcalls, but these analog tools are more reliable, record and store data offline on physical storage units, and use hand-operated accessories like keyboards, mice, and touchscreens. Even the monitors are cathode-ray tubes with limited graphic interfaces that process and display simple data in straight-forward readouts. It’s not pretty, and it’s not expected to be. It just needs to work.
OFF-WORLD CURIOSITIES : As you ascend into high society and look closer at the tech endemic among the rich and megacorps, you see an entirely different era of off-world technology, full of unparalleled innovations with staggering capabilities, as if plucked from a dream right out of science fiction. Hinting that the life and luxuries enjoyed by the colonies may be radically more advanced than you might think. You can’t help but notice the AI-powered drones projecting personalized ads for every passerby. The bioscanners in the nicer housing complexes and shopping districts. The new wave of synthetic augmentations that heighten natural abilities and interface directly with the mind (ever so trendy with the millennials). And Wallace sure as shit isn’t building his Replicant tech using anything found here.
Hell, even parts of the LAPD give you pause. Half the crime lab is stockpiled with submicroscopic scopes and forensic fandangles that defy logic. Even the Esper Network can monitor an entire city and perform epic feats of data processing at lightning speed. Sure, it’s a supercomputer the size of your apartment, but it works. And they’ve had that beast for ages.
True, the Blackout inspired mass technophobia that stymied innovation on Earth for decades since. Yet could life off-world truly be so advanced? Makes you wonder what life you’re missing, out there in the colonies. All you know is, no matter what tech the colonies deem worthy to share, the rich will hoard it and the criminals will hawk it before you could ever save up enough to legitimately buy it.
INVISIBLE LUXURIES : For the rich, technology is new, convenient, fashionable, and invisible. The latest off-world innovations seamlessly integrate into everyday life. Wireless technologies. Sleek computer terminals with flat-screen monitors in glorious full color. Even pocket-sized editions with intense processing power given their size. And no clunky Vid-Phons for you. People ping you on your wristwatch and join meetings from anywhere system-wide in real-time, projecting lossless emanations in your conference room like they just dropped by for tea.
The more powerful you are, the more fashionable and invisible your technology. As a member of the upper class, you wear and flaunt your top-shelf tech like a fashion statement and status symbol with feigned nonchalance and masked pride.
DATA TECHNOLOGY
Due to the immeasurable loss suffered during the Blackout, society has turned to more analog means of data recording and storage. Most are widely accessible for Blade Runners to use during their investigations. With a simple RIT requisition order or a quick visit to a Shopping District or DNA Row, you can get all you need.
SATCRYSTAL : Cloud storage failed, so most permanent records and physical prints are etched onto satcrystal – thin sheets of plastic with data permanently laser-etched onto their surface.
ESPER PHOTO : Photographs created by proprietary Esper technology. Esper terminals can use Omniview to enhance and explore the three-dimensional space of a recorded Esper image in high resolution. You can also print one selected angle as a physical photo. Though not enhanceable, prints can store up to five seconds of one angle, which you can play by pressing down on the touch-activated satcrystal print.
DATA DISC : A thin, circular disc that reads and records binary data. As you need disc writers and readers to use them, data discs are considered outdated, though still quite common among the poor and with criminals using such tech as a means of encryption.
MEMORY CUBE : The standard solid-state memory drive containing a massive amount of data. Easily readable using a variety of wired and wireless data ports. Destructible, though relatively sturdy.
MEMORY BEARING : Surviving the Blackout itself, this nearly indestructible data sphere is the pricey but preferred data storage solution for high-security data storage among the rich and megacorps. Read exclusively by spherical drives, which are hard to find outside the megacorps and the RDU crime lab.
DRONE : Drones are a detective’s best friend, allowing for fully remote data capturing on the go. You can even rent one out from the LAPD armory. Just don’t lose it or else kiss an entire year’s salary sayonara.