techno156
At minimum, some form of simple Lemmy/Kbin/Fediverse explanation would probably be a good start. It tends to be presented as a big, confusing blob of “here’s a bunch of software you can self-host, and then communicate to other instances”, or “here’s a bunch of servers you can join”.
Your average new user isn’t going to be able to easily wrap their head around all of that at first go, especially if they’re not that tech inclined, or familiar with that kind of thing in the first place. Which server should they go for? Does the size of the server matter? Do they have to have accounts on all of the servers to see all the posts, etc.
Look at Lemmy’s home page, for example. It mentions a whole bunch of what the server runs, and that you can host one, which is neat, but also not what your typical new user is looking for when they just want to figure out the basics. It doesn’t really matter whether Lemmy uses Rust, PHP, or Scratch, since it’s all tech jargon to them.
Communities do effectively have to add their own “How to Lemmy” guides at the current time, since there is no guide for it, and that is entirely contingent on new users being on a server that has one, and being lucky enough/knowing how to use it.
Augment rights. This may be an internally contentious issue. on the one hand, it is clear that genetically-altered individuals are marginalized as of the Dominion War. It is by the narrowest of margins that Bashir avoids being drummed out of Starfleet for being the recipient of a medical procedure he had no ability to consent to or refuse, and the Jack Pack are in some ways treated more like inmates than patients. Less than a century and a half before, Illyrians were persecuted and La’an Noonien Singh faced bullying as a child for being the distant descendant of Khan. However the memory of the Eugenics Wars looms large in the human imagination and genetic augmentation may still be viewed by some as inherently hierarchical.
This I could see going either way, really. One of the issues with augments seems to be that the process tendency to result in some form of megalomania developing, so attitudes onwards augments tends to stem from that.
On the other hand, it is also fairly explicitly stated that it was really only Earth who ran into those issues, having tried to go well overboard with their Augments. Others, like the Denobulans, didn’t.
Instead of it being focused so much on Augments rights specifically, this might instead fall under a wider umbrella of decriminalising genetic engineering, instead pushing for it to be a regulated, guided process, rather than being outright banned.
Supporters might point to the Illyrians, who were driven to extinction in an attempt to appease the Federation’s genetic augmentation ban, by creating a virus in an attempt to reverse their modifications, that ultimately wiped them out. For them, genetic modification of every individual to suit the environmental demands, instead of terraforming, or biosuits, was part of their culture, and as such, supporting the ban would put it in violation of the principles behind General Order 1.
AI rights. A major theme of 24th-century Star Trek, from the beginning of TNG right up to Picard, is the debate over the rights of artificial intelligences, whether in the form of androids and synths like Data and Soji or photonics like the Doctor, Vic, and Moriarty. Less attention is given to less anthropomorphic forms of artificial intelligence. As we see in Lower Decks, Starfleet and the Daystrom Institute keep rogue AIs such as AGIMUS, Peanut Hamper, and 10111, with no evidence that they received any kind of trial or evaluation. The tragedy of 2385 became a major impediment to AI rights, but after the events of season 1 of Picard they seem to be back on track, at least for Synths. The personhood of photonics and non-anthropomorphic AIs remains up in the air.
At least one of the problems with AI rights is that the Federation struggles to figure out where software/hardware ends, and sapience begins. Both the Doctor, and the Exocomps were reset repeatedly when they began to express burgeoning sapience, because it was considered a malfunction in the software. There’s no clear way to look at a machine and say “yep, this is sapient”.
There’s also the rights issue, where rights apply to organic humanoids, and aren’t applied to machines the same way, but that might be an issue of definition.
We also see a few sapient machine civilisations by this point, and I could see rights groups pushing very hard to enshrine synth rights in a way similar to humanoid ones. Another synth ban would also prevent them from reproducing, and could be used to enact a genocide.
Humanocentrism and Vulcan Supremacy. Azetbur’s remarks on the Federation as a “Homo sapiens-only” club are not strictly true, but they’re not strictly unfounded either. The Federation’s capital has always been Earth, Starfleet’s headquarters are on Earth, Earth seems to have more colonies than any other member world (and stay tuned while we discuss that further), Humans make up the bulk of Starfleet (even on the Cerritos, by far the most species-diverse ship shown in Trek canon, the majority of the crew seem to be human), Federation Standard is closely descended from English, and four out of six Federation Presidents named or depicted across Star Trek canon are either human or of partial human ancestry. Vulcans, meanwhile, are frequently openly prejudiced against other species and seem to face little opprobrium for being so. This is more prominent in the 22nd and 23rd century, with anti-human terrorism on Vulcan, Spock’s childhood bullying, and Starfleet even declaring entire vessels (such as the Intrepid) Vulcan-only; but it still seems to be present in the 24th and even, in some respects, as far ahead as the 32nd century.
We start to see it be questioned a bit here and there, but decoupling the Federation from its core worlds/founders is almost certainly going to be a radical position.
If we dial back to the problem with Augments, it was stated fairly explicitly to be Earth’s mistake, and there’s the question of whether Earth should be allowed to impress the consequences of their own actions on the whole of the Federation. Other worlds in the Federation didn’t have problems with their Augments, and a few even saw benefits from their genetic modification processes (Illyrians/Denobulans).
Supremacy movements will always exist, but I doubt that they are in the mainstream. They seem to be fairly limited, with most of it beings stereotyping instead, like seeing all Vulcans as expressionless, humans as all being adapted, Klingons as honourable warrior meatheads, so on so forth. A progressive movements might try to poke into that, and try to shift stereotypes, either by suggesting a broadening of the exchange program, or offering increased exchanges opportunities.
Social issues in neighboring societies. It is clear that many of the Federation’s neighbors do not place as high a value on the rights of the individual or of the people as do the Federation, from Ferengi misogyny to Klingon classism to Cardassian totalitarianism. This is the opposite side of the coin from the prior issue, and it seems like the dominant strain of thought in the Federation is to pursue a policy of not intervening even in other advanced societies in the name of inalienable rights, or even providing more than token support to internal resistance movements much of the time (witness the struggles of Bajor, for instance.)
This one seems a bit contentious. While yes, on the one hand, social issues like that are a problem, the other is also whether the Federation has a right to intervene in the development of those societies by opposing or condoning particular social practices. For Starfleet at least, General order 1 would prohibit that kind of interference, and there’s a clearly drawn line where the Federation doesn’t descend and try to forcibly improve pre-warp societies, even if their values don’t align with the Federation’s.
It runs the risk of the Federation becoming an empire trying to force its morals and way of life on everyone else. It is also worth considering that the Federation might also be imperfect with how they treat their citizens (like synthetics), would they appreciate another civilisation interfering with them to fix that?
A few other things: It seems a bit Earth-centric and 21st century to think that Federation politics would have a similar kind of left-right political spectrum, let alone the definitions of them being more American than representative of what the political spectrum might be like elsewhere.
Politics might be like the Federation economy in the sense that it is big, different, and difficult to comprehend compared to today. At minimum, you also have to consider the political spectra of the other founding members, and how they might be different. A Vulcan political spectrum could be entirely orthogonal to the human one, for example, and that might impact the calculus for 25th century Federation politics.
The Prime Directive I could also see being contentious, and a political topic. Some people might think that it is too restrictive, preventing the Federation from helping civilisations that can be helped, and are in strife through no fault of their own, whereas others might think it isn’t good enough, with how often it seems to get violated, and the Federation start are nosing it’s way into other civilisations, even though it has no right to do so.
Especially since there was also the plot line of them being being hunted down for the advanced technology that’s part of their bodies (which is great for a bit of horror/dystopian writing. The doctor or bashir getting hunted down for their technology, and modified genes, respectively). With the possibility of a friendly Borg Collective, that kind of attitude could become pretty ugly.
Someone could snag a few unsuspecting Jurati Collective members, and start pulling them apart, effectively farming them.
It would be interesting to see how that goes, since while the Federation is more accepting of other former on/off enemies, like the Klingons, they’re much less friendly with the Borg, seeing the drones as a member of their former species, just with implants that can be removed, rather than as Borg.
Does make you wonder whether that attitude also extends to non-organic/humanoid beings. Would there be someone hunting down Exocomps for their parts, if they started developing their own improved versions of things that might otherwise be off-the-shelf parts?
It’s fairly clear that some parts of the Federation see non-organic beings as mere machines, and therefore not sapient, or deserving of the rights afforded to other humanoids.
