Some notes on the Technocracy
-----------------------------

The conventions are much more like each other than the traditions 
are. They all use almost the same language and reality, with small 
changes in focus. A Void Engineer will understand a member of 
Iteration X quite well, although they have different specialities.

Iteration X, Void Engineers and the Progenitors are much more 
directed towards research than NWO and the Syndicate, who are 
more concerned with keeping the status quo. This may lead to 
interesting conflicts, as we have seen.

The current 5 conventions are not the original conventions. As the 
technocracy have evolved, many conventions have been created, 
used and disbanded. For example, the convention responsible for 
the creation of the capitalist economy have been disbanded, the 
remaining parts absorbed into the Syndicate and New World Order. 
The current conventions are merely the current large projects 
(there are probably many technomancers involved in philosophy 
and psychology, but they are too few to make an own convention)

What kind of magick does the Technocracy use? In my opinion, 
they do not use vulgar magick at all. Vulgar magick is anathema to 
their whole philosophy (a member of the Celestial chorus will not 
call upon demons, a Dreamspeaker will not ravage the land). 
Instead they rely on coincidental magick, and often they avoid even 
that. Instead there is always technology. Why use Correspondence 
when there exist two-way encrypted Telepresence? Why use 
Forces, when there exist firearms? Since the Technocracy have 
technology several decades before everybody else, and can direct 
development at will (not to mention decide what "natural laws" 
should exist), they will almost never need to use magick in the form 
of the Traditions. 

One advantage of Technomancer magick is that you don't have to be 
a mage to use it. Since they have made most sleepers believe it 
works, it is actively supported by reality. Anyone with the 
necessary knowledge and tools can build a computer, while the 
creation of an equivalent Hermetic Talisman (Head of wisdom?) will 
be a complex process needing much esoteric knowledge, tass and an 
awakened avatar. Technomancer magick is potentially usable for 
everyone, which was its original goal. 

When the Technocracy became corrupt, it began to try to turn 
people away from certain technology, since they were easier to 
control that way. Computer manuals are notoriously hard to 
understand for normal people, just to avoid too many supporters of 
the Virtual Adepts. Television behaves in somewhat mysterious 
ways to the normal person, who can't program his video.

Note the similarities between the Illuminati and the Technocracy. 
In fact, the whole idea of Illuminati may be the result of the 
collective subconscious knowledge mankind has about the forces 
that control it. An ordinary person in WoD will not know anything 
about the Technocracy, the Traditions, the Camarilla, Pentex and 
everything else. But he will *feel* there is something going on out 
there, something dark and important. This has led to the creation of 
the illuminati-myth (which the Rosicrucians, the Technocracy, the 
Discordians and many other groups actively support. After all, 
when people are wearing illuminati T-shirts, who will take 
conspiracies seriously?)

The Technocracy have done a great work in hiding other mages 
(and other supernatural phenomena) using their paradigm. But this 
works both ways. No serious historian will believe that history the 
last 500 years have been shaped by a secret group of magicians! 
The Technocracy is trying to hide from everybody, and thus turns 
even more secret all the time. The technomancers are slowly 
pushed out from the reality they are creating, as there should not 
be any technomancers inside it. In the end, they will perhaps 
vanish completely when their work is done. Or they are trying to 
remain, spreading conspiracy theories to make people believe in 
secret groups influencing the destiny of mankind.

The Technocracy will become even more scary if it is not treated as 
a group of mages but as an intangible presence. Since it prefers to 
work in the shadows, using unknowing pawns, it will appear 
faceless. If the players never ever see a technomancer (or realise 
they have met one), the Technocracy will seem like a faceless 
enemy, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. This will turn the 
Ascension war into a very bleak reality, as the mages realise they 
are not fighting against a group of mages but an inhuman machine, 
almost impossible to reach or resist.