kyli wrote: ↑Thu Nov 21, 2019 8:02 am
The real question about the resonant telepathic technology is if it can boost a persons talent. If not, there is no reason to not give it to the Confederation. It would let them handle their own communications instead of going through the Karinnes biogenic network. Of course, it won't stop the rest of the Confederation from still wanting to get their hands on biogenics. Real time communication is nice, but the Karinnes are giving them access to that already. They want the talent boost just as much or more.
You're neglecting two things here. The Resonant tech allows a telepath to interact with machines
without need for an implant. So while non-telepaths have to wait until adulthood to have a gestalt implant to enjoy a lot of what technology offers(in particular merges). The telepath will be able to enjoy that tech shortly after their talent expresses and they've obtained the requisite training. The second issue is "bandwidth" the different options offer.
So if you express early enough, in one example, you could be a 6 year old telepath and playing Citadel Online, or you can be a non-telepath and have to wait until you are 18 to get the implant. Prior to the retrovirus being released, the only people under 18 playing CO were the children of Generations. Now the population of Generation children has increased by several billion, but that's a species wide thing for Earth and the Imperium, and planet-wide for Karis.
But once you move into the resonant tech, you now have Generations
and Telepaths being able to access that from
childhood,while the non-telepaths in the population have to wait for Adulthood. Most races in the Confederation are only minority telepathic(less than 50%, often much less than 50%).
Then you throw in the additional variables of "What kind of 'bandwidth' does the Resonant tech have compared to the implant?" Jason himself has previously commented on how the biogenic commune merge is far superior than the one available through the implants, although the implants are getting very good as well(with the biogenic-augmented implant being the best of the implants, but still not as good as Generation commune).
It's possible, and I'd probably even say likely, that the resonant tech is going to improve the quality/bandwidth of the biogenic commune even further, and that will likely ripple down to the others as well. But you'll be moving from
"Good" being the existing Confed Implant,
"better" being the Karrine (Biogenic gestalt) implant,
and "best" being Generation Commune with biogenics
to the order of precedence becoming:
"Worst" being existing Confed implant tech.
"Fair" being Confed implant tech w/Resonant gestalt.
"Good" being Telepathic merge w/Resonant Tech or Implant with Biogenic Gestalt
"Better" being Generation merge w/Resonant Tech
"Best" being Generation merge w/ Biogenic+Resonant tech.
Now also throw in the little detail Jason has brought up because of Kevin Ball and the response times typically expected from non-telepaths vs telepaths. Let us also revisit that whole being able to access things as children which can help improve those response times, while non-telepaths have to wait until they're adults... It's basically a setup to create a telepath master-class for the races that are not completely telepathic. The only question will be if the implants can close the gap enough to make it less of an issue, but that still doesn't address the advantage the Telepaths gain from obtaining earlier access to the stuff.