Human Ship Origins

[george moromisato]

A few clues here:

http://neurohack.com/transcendence/foru ... 17&p=38941

North Atlantic Union and NAMI share the same first two initials. Coincidence? Nope.

[Atarlost]

It's the last two letters that are the stumpers, though I'd figured on North American instead of North Atlantic for the first two.

Munitions Incorporated?

Military Industries?

[george moromisato]

I was hoping for some epileptic trees.

NAMI's full name is rather prosaic: North Atlantic Manufacturing Industries.

Perhaps this is going too far, but I imagine that various 21st century companies merged/morphed into NAMI, EI, and Pacific Defense (among many others). NAMI started from anglo-centric companies (US/britain/australia/nz/canada). Pacific Defense is clearly Asia-centric. EI is probably the most international.

Of course, hundreds of years later, the original nationalities don't matter as much.

[Atarlost]

I'd pegged it as NAMI being US/Canada, EI as being mostly European, and Bushido and Makayev also being old companies based around Japanese companies and Russian companies respectively. China seems represented only by the Sung so I figured they had gone back to communism or suffered acute demographic collapse as a result of their one child policy and had no representation in the Corporate Hierarchy. I'd guessed that Pacifica was founded in the Centauri system and not directly linked to Earth.

[george moromisato]

...EI as being mostly European...

I actually was about to write that in my post, but I thought that no one would call themselves "Earth Industries" unless they represented a lot of the world. But on second thought, maybe European companies would.

[It's probably not too controvertial to predict that the largest economies of the mid/late 21st century will be the US and China (not necessarily in that order). In that kind of a world, I can imagine that a successful conglomerate of European companies might cling even more to internationalism and brand themselves "Earth Industries".]

p.s.: I don't want to add too much detail to the 21st century history of the Transcendence universe for fear of being proven wrong in my lifetime.

[Lmoy]

p.s.: I don't want to add too much detail to the 21st century history of the Transcendence universe for fear of being proven wrong in my lifetime.

I generally assume works of fiction to take place in different continuities than the one we're in But that's probably a good policy.
And I like the idea of Earth Industries being mainly European. Seems to suit the Europeans

[DSMK2]

Could we get a stickied thread that compiles all backstory based threads? Should help answer any immediate questions.

[george moromisato]

Could we get a stickied thread that compiles all backstory based threads? Should help answer any immediate questions.

Even better might be a section of the wiki.