Editing Traiders:The Dalles (section)

==Raising the Cloud==

This technologist enclave was once the datacenter for one of the most important corporations in the world. This company specialized in making sense out of the Internet. In fact it's name became synonymous with searching the world wide web. With the demise of the global economy the Internet as it once was has ceased to exist. The history, technology and content of the internet have been backed up and preserved by technologists at The Dalles and other locations but a living breathing internet is almost inconceivable without a global e-commerce culture and most people don't even own a phone anymore.

The technologists at The Dalles want to change that. With religious devotion they work to create a world where people not only survive but thrive, where life is about more than controlling wind farms and grazing land. They aspire to nothing less than Raising the Cloud: a network of networks of machines and people that can think thoughts and solve problems that transcend mere human capability.

Although the technology being deployed by these technologists is superficially similar to the old Internet the underlying design is very different. A constantly changing self-regulating system of autonomous software called The Virus feeds on information and infects machines, expanding to make use of any and all resources that connect to those machines. The Virus essentially maintains and defends itself as long as the machines keep running.