List of corporations
Wed, 2010-08-25 05:07
One of the easiest ways of adding verisimilitude to a setting is to have plenty of brands, company names and references. Usually I just make up hypercorps that suit me, but it is nice to have a quick access reference of canon hypercorps (especially since that will tell me in what domains I need to invent new ones).
Here is a first attempt at compiling a list of corporations in the core book and Sunward. Have I missed anyone?
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Wed, 2010-08-25 11:25
#2
Re: List of corporations
That depends on the definition of cooperation's, and if its for example relevant to list Extropia as a corporation/conglomerat.
Yes, there are going to be tricky cases. I was considering whether mentioned autonomist collectives like the Love and Rage Collective ought to be included, for example. I think we can be pretty certain many habitats are associated with a habitat corp, owned by the local government (or vice versa). In the end I decided that this list will just have canon corporations. I will make another list with my own additions.
In the US there are about 25 million firms, giving us 0.08 firms per capita. So if there are 100 million people in the solar system, there should totally be about 8 million firms. In practice, the number will be somewhat lower because fewer people have firms in the new economy (the extropians might have more per capita, but they are just a subset of the rest) and because the fall likely wiped out a lot of small firms, giving a few large ones chance to grow explosively into the current set of hypercorps. The size and income of firms tend to follow a lognormal or power law distribution, so we should expect a few really dominant ones and a myriad of tiny ones.
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Wed, 2010-08-25 17:32
#3
Re: List of corporations
Thanks for the list. I am still reading through Sunward, so if I find any not on the list, I'll make a note.
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Thu, 2010-08-26 06:51
#4
Re: List of corporations
Ah, found that I had overlooked Progress Station Security, S126.
Overall, there are an awful lot of mining companies (maybe because they are location-determined) and surprisingly few service companies. Here are three companies that I came up with this morning:
Gawande Consulting
Gawande Consulting was originally a minor terraforming lobbyist organisation, networking between various groups on Mars and the Chinese government think tanks. Today it is a major (if neutral) power in Planetary Consortium politics.
Gawande cornered the market for political consultants during the early months of the formation of the Planetary Consortium. The company bought the indenture contract of every lobbyist, political analyst or spin doctor they could get their hands on. It paid off well, making Gawande Consulting a key player in PC politics and absurdly well-connected.
Since then Gawande has reinvented itself as a "metaconsultancy". Rather than trying to keep lobbyists and analysts in-house it networks them. The originally indentured consultants have all finished their contracts and started their own consultancies. But Gawande was very successful in building networks (and, by all accounts, being indentured by them was pretty exciting) so it rarely has problems getting them and their firms to play along. Gawande can create think tanks and PR firms on the fly by connecting the right experts and lobbyists in its network (for a percentage of their fees). This makes them the go-to-guys when new problems or players appear, or when there is a need to forge unusual alliances - which, thanks to the nature of the PC, happens all the time.
Rather than having old-fashioned offices it owns Ryu's, a restaurant/bar (and the adjoining cafe/tobacco shop). Located in the outskirts of HQ close to the U-Mars campus it is frequented by a crowd of political strategists, public affairs people, policy bloggers, lawyers, marketers and social network analysts. Many come here purely for food and social interaction, but under the schmoozing there is also a discreet bidding for projects and meta-lobbying. Outsiders who don't understand the codes are treated politely but ignored.
Zahir
Zahir does attention management: when you want people to notice something, or get distracted from something, then Zahir can help you. This creative firm is an expert in media manipultion, spin doctoring and lobbying. It is regularly hired by corporations and NGOs who want to affect public attention. It was involved in getting the public roar for the blood of Prism Exergy when their near-slavery practices were revealed, and it manufactured a media sensation that successfully blotted out the news that some mishandling at Caltech had lost a valuable ecosystem archive, dooming several butterfly species to permanent extinction.
Zahir's main offices are in a nicely leafy genomist building in Nytrondheim dome of Valles-New Shanghai, but in practice the company is delocalized across all of Mars.
RepRip
RepRip is one of the most successful reputation management and monitoring companies in the inner system. It is also very good at not being noticed: most CivicNet users never notice the fine print on their client software or social spaces that mentions that they belong to RepRip.
RepRip makes its money from keeping track of reputations, opinion and mood across the inner system. This valuable information is sold to other hypercorps, making a tidy profit and keeping the social networking software free or cheap.
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Thu, 2010-08-26 12:36
#5
Re: List of corporations
Ah, found that I had overlooked Progress Station Security, S126.
Overall, there are an awful lot of mining companies (maybe because they are location-determined) and surprisingly few service companies. Here are three companies that I came up with this morning:
I think that the prominent lack of service businesses is likely a symptom of reputation economics.
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"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, 1787
"That sounds like heresy. We're going to wipe you from the history books for that crap!" - Texas Board of Education, Ruling on March 12th, 2010
Thu, 2010-08-26 12:05
#6
Re: List of corporations
I think that the prominent lack of service businesses is likely a symptom of the open source movement, which seems to have come a long way by 10 AF.
Some business categories are likely disappearing due to technology: with a good net or mesh, a lot of retail companies and chains become irrelevant - you print whatever is needed, so there is no need for a WalMart. Or rather, it turns into something like Amazon.com or Lulu. However, there might be enormous chains of fab stores where you can get your stuff professionally printed while you drink a coffee.
Not sure services can be replaced with open source: how do you get financial advice, ego backups, graphical design or lobbying with open source? Sure, you can try crowdsourcing them, but the results are problematic.
Looking at big revenue companies today, I guess the commodities, oil and gas giants have been replaced with energy companies and raw material producers. But there is much more competition, since you can use many more kinds of input.
There should be plenty of financial services, especially ones tied to the new complexities of the solar economy. Rep, hyperfast trading and sentient companies are just the start of it.
Something that is really lacking in EP writeups so far is insurance. Sure, the Fall killed insurance companies left and right, but by now new insurance systems will have emerged. Somebody has to do risk arbitrage. I also think we ought to see a lot more temp agencies and other forms of employment brokers.
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Thu, 2010-08-26 12:53
#7
Re: List of corporations
Some business categories are likely disappearing due to technology: with a good net or mesh, a lot of retail companies and chains become irrelevant - you print whatever is needed, so there is no need for a WalMart. Or rather, it turns into something like Amazon.com or Lulu. However, there might be enormous chains of fab stores where you can get your stuff professionally printed while you drink a coffee.
Not sure services can be replaced with open source: how do you get financial advice, ego backups, graphical design or lobbying with open source? Sure, you can try crowdsourcing them, but the results are problematic.
Looking at big revenue companies today, I guess the commodities, oil and gas giants have been replaced with energy companies and raw material producers. But there is much more competition, since you can use many more kinds of input.
There should be plenty of financial services, especially ones tied to the new complexities of the solar economy. Rep, hyperfast trading and sentient companies are just the start of it.
Something that is really lacking in EP writeups so far is insurance. Sure, the Fall killed insurance companies left and right, but by now new insurance systems will have emerged. Somebody has to do risk arbitrage. I also think we ought to see a lot more temp agencies and other forms of employment brokers.
Yeah, big mistake on my part. I was thinking software. But I will say that reputation economics probably is a large factor in why services are not a profitable industry. It's a trend you already see today: people are more willing to pay for a good than a service (the latter usually in the form of a favor), while businesses are more willing to pay for a service than a good (though many contracts call for both goods and services). In that sense, while there are likely many service businesses, they are most likely contract hypercorps which mainly deal with other hypercorps, and not something that deals with the public sector. They are probably businesses which the average consumer knows nothing about.
This might be further compounded by the nature of their contracts: that Ectomorph Resleeving Center might actually be ran by Danhouser & Sons, a small family-run hypercorp that contracts their equipment from Ectomorph... but they wear Ectomorph's brand because it's part of the fine print. And that nanofab vending machine that you're using right now might be owned and maintained by a local hypercorp, the logo on top says Omnicor, because that's who gave them the initial hardware.
As for insurance, I think that it largely got consolidated into banking systems. Insurance is a specialized form of banking (risk-based money investment), so it wouldn't surprise me that Go-Nin both holds your money, and takes a stipend in case something bad happens. Businesses like credit companies and collection agencies probably did the same.
__________________
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, 1787
"That sounds like heresy. We're going to wipe you from the history books for that crap!" - Texas Board of Education, Ruling on March 12th, 2010
Thu, 2010-08-26 14:55
#8
Re: List of corporations
Not sure services can be replaced with open source: how do you get financial advice, ego backups, graphical design or lobbying with open source? Sure, you can try crowdsourcing them, but the results are problematic.
Extrapolating a bit from today, I would suggest that they would be sourced from friends or friends of friends (generally not more than two levels removed from one's social core). If someone needs some rack space, a friend might have four units not doing anything or some space under their desk and a port on the DMZ switch not doing anything. If someone needs disk space, someone else might have a few terabytes not doing anything at the moment (but you have to provide your own backups). If someone needs to host a website someone else has an all-you-can-eat plan at a hosting provider and might be interested in giving them an unprivileged login for their site. Friends often set up shell servers for friends (and friends of friends, depending on how the web of trust works out). I would think this would be reasonably common among Autonomists.
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Thu, 2010-08-26 15:06
#9
Re: List of corporations
Not sure services can be replaced with open source: how do you get financial advice, ego backups, graphical design or lobbying with open source? Sure, you can try crowdsourcing them, but the results are problematic.
Extrapolating a bit from today, I would suggest that they would be sourced from friends or friends of friends (generally not more than two levels removed from one's social core). If someone needs some rack space, a friend might have four units not doing anything or some space under their desk and a port on the DMZ switch not doing anything. If someone needs disk space, someone else might have a few terabytes not doing anything at the moment (but you have to provide your own backups). If someone needs to host a website someone else has an all-you-can-eat plan at a hosting provider and might be interested in giving them an unprivileged login for their site. Friends often set up shell servers for friends (and friends of friends, depending on how the web of trust works out). I would think this would be reasonably common among Autonomists.
Isn't that basically a brief description of the Rep Economy, something that is only slowly becoming useful in the Inner System, where most of these Hypercorps are HQ'd?
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Fri, 2010-08-27 13:08
#10
Re: List of corporations
Isn't that basically a brief description of the Rep Economy, something that is only slowly becoming useful in the Inner System, where most of these Hypercorps are HQ'd?
Not nearly so formal. What I described is pretty much what happens today. __________________
I am everywhere.
Fri, 2010-08-27 16:46
#11
Re: List of corporations
But I will say that reputation economics probably is a large factor in why services are not a profitable industry.
I see reputation economics as one of the main dystopic elements of Eclipse Phase. It basically screws those without personal connections and gives great powers to social covens and cliques. __________________
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Fri, 2010-08-27 19:05
#12
Re: List of corporations
I see reputation economics as one of the main dystopic elements of Eclipse Phase. It basically screws those without personal connections and gives great powers to social covens and cliques.
It does have some very dark sides. While Sunward nicely showed hypercorps up to all sorts of no good, I hope the outer system book will show just how scary it can be to live in a society where people's opinion about you is a matter of life and death.
"These shuttles are only for mutual citizens. Unmutals can walk."
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Sat, 2010-08-28 14:28
#13
Re: List of corporations
I just realized one group of companies that really matter to travelling characters, yet so far have not been mentioned much in EP: the hospitality industry. Here are a few ideas:
Orbitel
A large hotel chain, mainly found in the LLA but with hotels in most major habitats in the inner system, the Belt, Europa and Titan. Orbitel emerged from the post-Fall merger of several hotel chains and still has widely varying styles. The Jumeirah Hostel brand consists of inexpensive but well-kept budget hotels, Golden Rose is the mid-range hotels, and Apex is the luxury version. The chain also owns The Tranquility (see below) and Polychoron, a series of sport/entertainment resorts.
The Tranquillity
The Tranquillity in Old Nectar is the oldest hotel in the solar system. While an older hotel in LEO (The Heaven Lounge) existed, it was destroyed in the Fall. While The Tranquility is by modern standards old-fashioned, the age and tradition attracts many visitors seeking a link to the past. The interior is a mixture of early lunar colonist chic (with visible life support systems and early exploration memorabilia) and even more old-fashioned Old World quasi-Victorian. Interior designers and historians may get sick of it, but most visitors lap it up.
Tjāwz al-Ḩmāmāt
Enhancement spa in the Marineris region, catering to people who want to upgrade or treat their morphs while enjoying sports, good food and a meditative pseudo-monastic environment. This spa is located on top of the grand and narrow cliffs separating North Coprates Chasma from South Coprates Chasma. From the spa visitors can look down six kilometres on either side. Access is only by air. The buildings are reminiscent of an Arabic castle combined with a modernist monastery: a mix of the understated and opulent. The spa is particularly popular for people learning to use new and complex enhancements: personal trainers are available, and the sports grounds are equipped to handle even exotic morphs. It is a public secret that up-and-coming people from Valles go here to have a bit of personal defence training.
Crystal Space
An infomorph hotel/accommodations chain found across the solar system. Crystal Space offers reliable, safe virtual space for egos between bodies, AGIs (where legal) and other virtual travellers. The default skin is a traditional hotel, but the chain has a library with a wide number of possible interiors and discounted deals with many simspace companies. In many habitats the local branch has ties to other infomorph-friendly hospitality facilities such as mixed-reality clubs and AR restaurants. Crystal Space recently opened the first hotel in Glitch.
The Open Publican Network
An autonomist “chain” of hotels, inns, hostels, brothels and other hospitality places. Each is run by its own commune and is independent from the others. However, the Network allows them to share best practices, trade favors and most importantly, coordinate quality management. Review boards consisting of trusted frequent travellers rate their experiences, allowing favored hotels to list the board certificates. They of course post their public reputations too, but by having a number of coordinated and mutually calibrating review boards it is hard to do reputation gaming – something quite a few criminal networks have attempted. Since the OPN also shares much information, trains people and distributes blueprints OPN hospitality tends to have a few commonalities the seasoned traveller can recognize.
Drop City Convention Centre
DCCC is located on the shores of Tyska Lacus, in the vicinity of Nyhavn. Originally an auxiliary landing spot, it was recently turned into a convention centre by a local microcorp. The somewhat unusual idea of a physical convention centre has been a moderate success: rather than sending betas to discuss and re-merge in some server, people actually enjoy going to the luxurious facilities for conferencing, demonstrations and informal schmoozing. Many microcorps bring their employees here for strengthening their ties. Communications to Nyhavn through the rail network are excellent, and the DCCC also offers a marina for boating tours of the lake.
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Sat, 2010-08-28 14:44
#14
Re: List of corporations
Also, regarding services - admin-tech. I've had a discussion with GreyBrother about it and we started discussing types of Extropian corps working in the outer system. With the anarcho-capitalist system working on Extropia, they'd have some pretty sophisticated administrative AGIs/AIs/experts/technologies and to extend that, corporations. Now, in Sunward, it was mentioned that Fa-Jing was getting some bad rep because they were dealing with Titanian microcorps - the autonomist factions being mighty unpopular with the common people in the inner system. What Extropian admin-tech hypercorps would do is facilitate trade and flow of goods/services/information between the outer system factions and inner system hypercorps. This also creates a great opportunity for merchant middle man corps - buying stuff in the inner system that is in demand in the outer system, exporting it and trickling it into the rep networks - in return buffing up rep to acquire goods that are in high demand in the inner system (iceroids are a prime example) and importing them there to earn cash.
This could also create some gray/black market hypercorps which would be totally legit in the outer system, but software pirating criminals in the inner system - I call them the open sourcing corps. What they'd do is acquire inner system blueprints, crack them, and release them into the autonomist networks. I can see the legit middle man trader hypercorps having shadow operations which actually buff up their rep by releasing copyrighted software in the outer system, then using that rep to acquire goods and importing it back in the inner system. Nothing better than using ideology to earn cash, eh?
Just my two cents, I hope I haven't derailed your thread Arena 
And the list is awesome!
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Sun, 2010-08-29 11:43
#15
Re: List of corporations
Ataraxia
"Your employees deserve peace of mind."
Founded as a 12-person start-up in 3 BF, Ataraxia offered employee counseling and therapy services to companies operating in orbit. The isolation and danger of extended orbital employment would take a mental toll on off-world employees, and companies would contract Ataraxia to egocast into the facility and offer psychiatric counseling or psychosurgery in simulspace environments.
The Fall changed Ataraxia dramatically. Because of their close business relationship with a nearby egocasting facility, they were able to secure off-world egocasts for their small staff. Ataraxia was rebuilt in the Osiris neighborhood of Qianjiao on Mars, though these days their physical offices are small and decentralized to suit their frequent egocasting and simulspace work around the solar system. But more importantly, the Fall created a vast need for their services: suddenly the system was full of traumatized egos who would make up a sizable portion of the corporate workforce. Ataraxia's client list grew rapidly and today the firm has over four hundred certified counselors, therapists, and pyschosurgeons, as well as many administrative employees to handle their contracts, plans, and clients.
Ataraxia's counselors are brought in to assist with a wide range of employee wellness challenges. It could be as simple as revitalizing workers who are isolated or stressed by lonely deployments or dangerous work environments, or as complex as easing employees through restoration from backup or stack recovery after sudden workplace accidental deaths. They have even fielded a number of cases of inter-corporate sabotage, such as memetic attacks used to target a competing company's morale.
Although Ataraxia enjoys a largely stellar reputation in the Planetary Consortium, they are not without scandal. In 8 AF, the Venusian media ran a string of stories about Ataraxia counselors being hired to perform psychosurgery on employees without their consent, behaviorally and emotionally shaping the employees to increase productivity, happiness, and company loyalty. Ataraxia has denied these accusations and some have speculated that the story was fabricated by the Morningstar Constellation to favor local Venusian counseling firms that are less aligned with the Planetary Consortium. The truth of the matter remains unknown.
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It looked quite extensive, thank you.
That depends on the definition of cooperation's, and if its for example relevant to list Extropia as a corporation/conglomerat.
I think many habitats in legal sense exist as a legal entity and could thus themselves be called cooperation's/conglomerates or nations. But Its unclear if these legal entities use the same label as its "public" name.
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