Sensi: Media on Tarnus

Sensi is the primary medium of mass communication on Tarnus. In this society, the media providers make no distinctions among news, propaganda and advertising; to them, it is all a single flow, called sensi, that supplies a high-volume continuous soup of impressions strongly spun to serve the needs of the suppliers. Sensi arrives in City homes over the lightpipe web, pumped in by government offices, corp divisions, coll spokespeople, public infobrokers, underworld groups, masked satirists and protesters, and anyone who can buy, steal or seize access as a source. To get actually-useful information with some degree of reliability requires trusted interlocks with colleagues and cohorts. Some of the more prominent suppliers of sensi:

SENSI SUPPLIERS

Sensi Supplier	Supplier Code	Supplier Nickname	Notes
Regional Office of Factual Information	ROFI	Big Liars	the regional government supplier, largest of all
City News Office	CNO	Worst Liars	the sensi center of Gran Dar, considered the second largest supplier
Astranixeda	ASNX	AssTrolls	the official Astran Terxil Coll supplier
Hau Da Hua	HDHR	HowMou	the official Kai Ren Hau Coll supplier
Hejjati Shushan	DHCS	Shushers, Gack, Doggies	a Darko Hejj supplier
ArWord	ARAWN	ArseWord	the ArCorp corporate supplier
UillPower	UPN	Willies	the UniCorp corporate supplier
RhoadWays	RWN	CrudWays	the RhoCorp corporate supplier
The Drain	DX	Slain	underworld-based supplier, masquerading as one of several commercial corporate entities, all of which belong to a shadowy alliance of coll renegades.
FiberShank	FSX	Skank	one of the public brokers, using feeds from all the others
Jestice	JXX	Wockadoo, Snarks	one of the satirist suppliers, heavily masked and nomadic on the fiber
Shiexxikh	SXX	Dzoijin Shixi	called Shixi by humans; an illegal andro supplier, masked and steganographic through other suppliers, perceptible only to andros generally
Kaliban	KBSI	Kaliban	an andro supplier, masked, and supported by a small cadre of humans of the Sinantro and Incarnastar Colls
AmpliPhi	AMPXN	Greenies	an environmentally-focused supplier, run by three of the outland colls: Novander Wye, Gellin Sintherou, and Sinantro

The corporate suppliers of sensi take considerable care to conceal their biases and influences on the content of their sensi outputs. A careful receiver of their broadcasts can usually detect their attempts to muffle or neutralize unfavorable news simply by cross-checking them against each other and against the coll and andro suppliers.

The term ‘masked’ refers to the use of a set of techniques for feeding a lower-bandwidth signal through a high-bandwidth channel by piggybacking it on the high-bandwidth signal as correctible noise. The error-correction processes remove it at the receiver, but not before it is detected and separated out by special algorithms virally loaded in the receiver’s codes.

The term ‘steganographic' refers to the use of techniques for concealing a signal in a manner similar to masking as just described, but with added layers of concealment.

What forms does sensi take? It is layered, with successively more senses involved depending on the receiver’s resources and wishes.

SENSI LAYERS

Sensi Layer	Sensi Stream	Stream Nickname	Notes
1	printed stream	scribblies	text and still images
2	spoken stream	blabbies	audio language
3	music stream	twankle	melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic components
4	vision stream	scrin	shape and movement substreams, incorporating video, animation, and movement
5	biohelm stream	BH	substreams of odor, touch, taste, and even proprioceptive channels
6	chemstream set	snapses	neurochemistry to induce mood and sensory changes
7	instream set	droid heaven	all those below them in peak-experience planing similar to the andro innerspace experience

The cost of access to successively-more-sophisticated streams rises rapidly, and the rate differences to be paid are frequently the subject of bitter debate.