okay, so this one we kinda know. But for the purposes of world-building, we can break it down further.
In the meta-fiction, Programs are digital beings who live on the Grid, and Users are biological beings who live in the Real World. Users can come to the Grid, and Programs--or at least ISO's--can exist in the Real World. Like any unnecessarily complex and totally awesome scienceing, this process involves lasers.
Let's back that up a little bit, though. Does this mean that all humans are Users? Programs, to varying degrees, appear to have reverence for Users that approaches the level of religious fervor; believing them to be the ones who brought Programs into being--and through a level of abstraction, this is largely true. (I would argue that whether or not Users intended their programs to behave as they do in the Grid is largely immaterial, as the original movie is pretty vague about this--there are two scenes where Users and Programs (Flynn/Clu and Alan/Tron) are heard to directly communicate verbally; although it's most likely that we're not meant to interpret this as a literal back and forth communication. Most likely it's a shortcut to imply the will of the User being communicated to their Program through their terminal commands.)
However, the term "user" had a specific connotation in computing circles back in 1982--a user, at the time, was anybody with the knowledge, skill and patience to make a computer do what they wanted. To be a considered a "user" in 1982 meant being able to write programs, maintain databases, work with mainframes and networking, and have enough hardware knowledge to be able to make repairs yourself, or be able to build a computer out of parts. "User" hits differently now, of course--i work in IT, and i type "User" about three hundred times a day when i log issues. A User in 2021 is anyone who can turn on a computer, sign in and fumble with a keyboard and mouse in an attempt to get it to do things. I wind up fighting for the Users just as much as i fight with them.
So far, we have only seen two humans on the Grid, Kevin and Sam Flynn. Both were shown to be deeply knowledgeable about computers, and while Sam didn't seem to use his "User power" very much, he picked up how the Grid worked pretty quickly and was able to adjust.
pictured above: Sam Flynn, Adventure Himbo. likes dogs and motorcycles, probably has seven old laptops lying around with Kali Linux installed. three of them still work.
Would a baseline human with no particular computer knowledge be able to do what Sam and Kevin can do on the Grid? I doubt it--they would probably lack the knowledge necessary to change things. That may be an innate "power" of biological beings on the Grid that allows them to alter its systems, but without computer knowledge on an intuitive level, an average person may not have any way to access it. Therefore, all Users are humans, but not all humans are Users. This fits with the original concept of "Users" as we know it from 1980's computing jargon--humans like Kevin, Lora, Alan, Walter and Dillinger are special because of what they know, not what they are. And as a side note, i rather like that, because a lot of genre fiction relies on main characters being the other way around; and i think it largely sends the wrong message. You won't ever be a Skywalker, kid, and the odds of you being a Jedi are pretty slim even if you really really want to be one--midichlorians and all--but learn to code and step in front of the right laser array, and ZAP, you're instantly the most popular dude on the Grid!
Coming to the Fract--should Users be player characters? I'm thinking very much no. Specifically for the Fract, User influence should be like background radiation--everywhere and faintly detectable if you know what you're looking for, but invisible. The point of the Fract is that the programs within don't know that they're not on the original Grid, and there hasn't been any communication from Alan One or anybody else on the other side for macrocycles; so they're effectively on their own. And the game lore itself is specifically not going to state who stole the Grid copy or why. This will allow DM's to come up with their own background scenarios.
If a User appears in the Fract, it's because whoever is out there on the other side found a way to get in, and that should be considered a VERY big deal. A User with sufficient knowledge could repair the Fract and make it better than the original Grid, or they could twist it and mold it into a digital hell. Either would have massive ramifications for the world of the game and the barest possibility of meeting a User in the digital flesh should make most Programs shiver in their circuits.
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