Incorporated

[aesmael]

    On my way back home I had a thought about the Federation and its nominally multispecies nature (that's the United Federation of Planets of Star Trek fame). Despite claiming to represent an equal partnership of species from many different worlds the Federation we see is dominated by humans. Nearly every character we see is human. The senior officers are all human (particularly of rank Captain and above). The headquarters are on Earth; indeed, the Solar System is designated Sector 001. This has bugged me for quite some time.
    Why does it seem as if non-humans barely exist in this society? Where are all the alien crews and officers? Why is it every enemy lunges direct for Earth as their target and never, say, the Tellarite homeworld? The Federation is a Federation in name only. It might better be called the Terran Republic.
    My thought was that the Federation is basically the United States in space and the United States does not enter into equal partnerships. Its relationships are hierarchical. Other cultures are expected to be assimilated and come in the position of supplicants when they do; either way their culture itself is ignored. It is no wonder there is scarcely any alien presence in this society where hypothetically humans should be a minority.

    I thought again before I started writing this entry and decided I was wrong. It is not the fault of the United States that the Federation is what it is. Rather, I shall say it is only to be expected because the story is told by humans and, being what we are, it is overwhelmingly likely that the story would be human-centric.

Comments

[lost-angelwings.livejournal.com]

Also that the story is being told by American writers. >.>;;; It IS the United States in space, down to the mostly white crews with a few minorities (i.e. the demographic makeup of the States). :\

Maybe the humans just outbreed the other species? It seems like it. :( Earth has SO many other colonies, while Vulcan just has Vulcan. >.>;; (Esp since they live twice as long as humans you'd think there'd be twice as many)

It seems to be implied that other races reach a point where they realize continual population increases are bad for their society and they look inward, while humans seem to just keep breeding and then expand to support their booming population. >.>

The everwise and insghtful Ami

[aesmael.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I kept wanting to mention that the humans who are shown are mostly white and male too, even though that is illogical in the context of the story so far as I know, but I kept forgetting. I don't know if anything should be said about the disabled or neurodiverse because on the one hand it is portrayed as a utopian future in which medical technology is extremely advanced and on the other hand, Geordi.

I was wondering if it might be that humans outbreed everyone else but it still seems odd that we would outnumber the rest of the Federation (how many other species together? Six?) by so much. I suppose this is what comes of distilling each species down to a single characteristic.

I think we got 'pluck'.

Re: The everwise and insghtful Ami

[lost-angelwings.livejournal.com]

XD

I'm tired of humans having "pluck". XD

It's the ONE THING WE HAVE IN EVERY SCI FI SERIES!

Babylon 5, Star Trek, Stargate. Every species has SOME advantage. Stronger, Smarter, Live Forever, Super Powers, Oldest Race Evar, etc...

But we have "OMGNEVARGIVEUP"ness which apparently NO OTHER RACE HAS!

Also hero units >.>;;

It doesn't matter if a race has been space faring for millions of years and has technology up the wazoo, 1 Data/Geordi/O'Brian/Scotty/Samantha Carter is all it takes to find a way to defeat said race despite NO OTHER RACES BEING ABLE TO DO IT IN MILLIONS OF YEARS.

=_=;;

But mostly it's the whole "if you attack Earth and do not conquer it IMMEDIATELY, you will never get a second chance" b/c humans not only adapt faster than the Borg, they NEVAR GIVE UP.

In all 3 universes (b5, stargate, star trek) humans are portrayed as the "youngest" race and the LAST of all the races to go into space. Yet by the end of all 3 series' we're the MOST ADVANCED SPECIES IN THE GALAXY. >.>;;

Maybe that's why no other races are in Starfleet? They must hate us >.

Re: The everwise and insghtful Ami

[aesmael.livejournal.com]

That's a big ole list of stuff I dislike generally. Maybe that is why that situation usually does not happen in my worlds. :-)

[shooichi.livejournal.com]

Heh. I always just thought it was because Humans started the Federation, so they tend to be more invested in it. Your ideas make more sense though.

PS your user icon looks familiar. El Goonish Shive?

[aesmael.livejournal.com]

Yup! Obviously there were other founders (how does one federate oneself, exactly?) but I think humans are portrayed as being the main force behind it. I still thing it leans too far in the direction of being a one-species society but maybe if I had seen more stories showing the Federation's origins it would seem sensible? Or perhaps not. It has been many years since then.

<.<
>.>

I'm writing a post which features El Goonish Shive right now, actually.

[chaoticset.livejournal.com]

I think it was retconned in by saying that the Federation existed, but a lot of the rules were created just after humans got involved, etc.

Realistically...I'm curious now if perhaps the numbering system we see in Trek is simply the human numbering system within the Federation. It's not impossible to imagine that, were we listening to Klingons describing their Federation, their home sector would be their sector 001. Automatic translation could easily handle these conversions, assuming (as we are) that there's a gigantic shared database that keeps getting updated on each ship's computer.

Has nobody noticed that they keep referring to it as the "ship's computer", as if you only have one?! One computer on the whole ship?! How Borg is that?

[jessie-c.livejournal.com]

Remember that in 1966 computers took up whole suites of rooms and had entire dedicated crews of operators. Extrapolating from that gets you one computer per ship.

[chaoticset.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm fully aware of why it's that way...I'm just surprised nobody's retconned a "reason" to have multiple computers on the ship yet!

I mean, our expectation now is that each device has distributed processing power, perhaps, but there's a lot of fascinating possibilities -- is the ship's computer a primary datastore? If not, then what is it? If so, then who decides when data's stored in the central system or not? What devices have local buffering? What if the system controls all the processing and the devices are essentially wireless dumb input devices?

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps the ship is the computer now...

[aesmael.livejournal.com]

Looks pretty anti-Borg to me. As I understand it the Borg are all about distribution and decentralisation.

I suppose it is conceivable that they use multiple numbering systems like that. The idea of people saying one thing but hearing another due to an automated intermediary is something that bothered me about Greg Egan's Polis stories too - although the translator itself is slightly less bothersome. Doesn't make non-human government officials/citizens more visible though (a bigger budget might?)