Share
Federal Institute of Provolution, The
Provolution
Image from Steve Bowers

Overview

The Federal Institute of Provolution, or FIP, was created during the Vesta Convention of 937 AT with the specific aim of protecting the rights of provolved clades. Its other stated missions were to support already existing provolves, to provide aid and oversight to provolution attempts, and to drive the advancement of the field.

History

Despite the common misconception to the contrary, provolves during the Interplanetary Era often had the same rights that humans had. However, abuses were still widespread in provolve-unfriendly polities. Another significant problem was the fact that each time a new provolve clade was created, many essential services and products, such as specific medicines or education protocols, would have to be developed in a way best suited for them and this often took time to occur, which could lead to marginalization. The obvious examples of provolve exploitation and extreme cases of disenfranchisement frequently caused public outrage, resulting in efforts that ultimately advanced the cause of provolve rights and improved their overall life quality. Still, sometimes little could be done or the provolve problems simply went unnoticed. This situation only deteriorated during the Dark Ages.

Despite efforts to alleviate the situation, many provolved individuals and even some clades were still in precarious positions during the days preceding the First Federation. In many cases, it was sufficient to send a rescue party or to assign resources to disadvantaged provolves. Not so easy to solve were problems stemming from entrenched memetic conditioning and poor or malicious provolution attempts. There were, of course, widespread disagreements on how to solve these problems which led to many independent efforts with varying degrees of success.

Aiming to conduct a large, centralized and organized effort to solve the provolves' issues, the Caleb politician Wofyip Fenrir Alpha of Caneshe Orbital rallied several pro-sentient rights political parties together into one broad alliance. As a result, he gained a seat at the Vesta Convention of 937 AT, and was able to convince the nascent Federation to found the Federal Institute of Provolution. Wofyip become its first Main Branch Headmaster, remaining in the position for one full term of 15 standard years. Enjoying the support of many Federation hyperturings, the FIP quickly spread through Sol System and beyond, becoming a major legal and technical authority in the field of provolution.

Thanks to its policy of offering employment to any provolves it created or protected, the FIP became a well known provolve employer during its lifetime. By the 1100s AT, the Institute had more provolves on its payroll than humans, a situation that certainly helped it develop good relations with a number of provolve-friendly polities and organisations. For instance, the FIP had a close working relationship with the Institute of Primate Provolution, especially during the latter's first steps towards provolution. It was not uncommon for the IPP and FIP to exchange personnel and knowledge. Often, similar relationships occurred outside of SolSys between the local FIP interstellar branch and other like-minded institutes or megacorporations.

With an increasingly larger network of allies, the FIP experienced a major growth period which culminated in its so called Golden Age (1190 AT - 1355 AT). This period marks the institute's most significant contributions to the field of provolution, for instance the complete provolution of the Streya clade in 1245 AT by SolSys 29th Headmaster Mekeba Tu Del and her hyperturing development team. By the 1400s AT, the FIP had grown so large that it began to show signs of internal fragmentation. Being increasingly influenced by local powers, the various interstellar branches began to diverge from one another and coordination over interstellar distances began to be compromised.

The FIP's fortunes rose and fell with the Federation's. By the 1500s AT, it had become little more than a tool of the megacorporations. The same hyperturing might serve as a senior administrator for the FIP and have a position on the board of the megacorp lobbying for a license. FIP licenses were sometimes seen as little more than high-level currency. At the same time, licences for smaller research groups were more often rejected for potential copyright infringement than due to ethical issues. Over the following century, those smaller groups became aware of this and unsurprisingly began to heavily criticize the Institute while looking for more reputable alternatives.

Especially in its later centuries, the FIP became plagued by corruption charges and accusations that it ignored some situations of provolve abuse. Only a few of these were ever substantiated, notably the Bitenics Corruption Incident of the 16th Century AT. In this incident, many FIP high ranking personnel of the time were being paid and manipulated by a number of radical Pan-sophontist parties to divert attention away from the controversial provolution of the Bitenic Squids. Given the contrast between the Institute's espoused ethics and its actions, the public outrage was considerable. The more scrupulous employees switched affiliation to the IPP, whose star was ascendant. Other employees simply joined the megacorps or formed their own daughter organisations in the following decades. The achievement of the Second Singularity in 1618 AT and onward dealt a final blow to the FIP. A number of SI:2 individuals were quick to take the lead in the provolution field and, as a result, they essentially made the Institute obsolete.

The remnants of the formal FIP — by this point a largely powerless organisation outside of Solsys — were disbanded in 1652 AT.

Activities

The FIP had two broad remits:

First was dealing with existing provolves - protecting them from exploitation, reintegrating those who had been separated from the rest of civilisation during the Dark Age , providing high-quality services and products tailored for any current provolve clades, and providing corrective fixes for partial and unsatisfactory provolution attempts. During the early Federation, the FIP was well known for offering sanctuary to any provolved individual or clade that requested it, and became involved in several legal battles with various research groups or corporations. The FIP was also known to engage in interstellar missionary work to improve the quality of life of provolve populations living in civilized space and beyond.

Second was providing oversight and aid to additional provolution attempts. Interested in aiding the education of provolvers, the FIP offered free guidelines for good provolution practices and free courses aiming to teach the required technical skills. To engage in provolution, a research group had to first apply for a license, sign an ethics form, and submit to an investigation of their planned techniques and equipment. Over the Federation's history, close to a hundred clades were created using FIP licenses, including the first invertebrate provolves. (A further 3,400 applications were rejected.)

Organisations and individuals were able to request the FIP's assistance with provolution projects. Upon contact, the FIP would require a fee (dependent on the project's complexity) or a FIP license to provide help. Assuming at least one of these conditions were met, the FIP would then send personnel to aid in the project and lend resources, if necessary. If unethical or criminal practices were discovered, the FIP would attempt to take control of the project through legal means. In practice, only very wealthy individuals or organisations could afford to pay the contract fee and hire the FIP to provolve a new whole clade for them from scratch. As such, FIP assistance was more often requested to provolve individual animals according to pre-existing templates and to deal with unexpected problems which occurred during an already ongoing provolution project.

Organisation

To tackle the challenge of maintaining a cohesive and effective organization on an interstellar scale, the FIP employed three parallel strategies. The first was the FedRep. Being designed to be very conservative entities, these AIs had relatively little capacity to change over time and provided an element of consistency for the Institute. Each FedRep represented the interests of the Federation as a whole and relayed its messages and orders to each local FIP branch. While not formally part of the FIP hierarchy, in practice the FedReps held authority over each branch's Headmaster and the Overseer.

Another measure was the presence of a biont Headmaster and an AI Overseer. Nominally, both positions were equivalent and had complementary roles as leaders of the local interstellar branch who actively nudged its activities in directions in line with the local FedRep's deliberations. Volunteers had to pass through a rigorous selection process to be able to participate as a candidate in the public election that selected the new Headmaster or Overseer. These elections happened whenever the previous officeholder stepped down from the role, whose term was 15 standard years. Both positions held an equal degree of authority to propose and implement a wide range of administrative policies, ranging from resource allocation to the administration of the branch's provolution projects. In addition, to include an element of mutual moderation, the Headmaster and the Overseer had the ability to request the resignment of each other, withdrawal of the FedRep's support, and even the dissolution of the local branch with the intent of substitution. In practice they only employed this power in cases of gross misconduct, and even then this involved legal bureaucracy that often required the approval or a direct order from the local FedRep.

The last measure was the inclusion of a spiritual component in the Institute's culture. This spiritual meme complex was a very broad distillation of prosophontist principles in line with overall Federation ethics combined with a sentiment of reverence and respect for life. This cultural aspect was often promoted in subtle and not so subtle ways in the FIP's education modules, propaganda and their other media, as well as in the day-to-day interactions among employees. As intended, the FIP spiritual aspect, which was strongly encouraged in all its employees, provided all branches with a common goal they agreed on and rationalizations as to why it should be achieved. Paraphrasing the FIP memeticist, Julie M'Bolla, "we work to provide other lifeforms the gift of sentience that they deserve because all life is worthy of love and respect."

Critics

From its inception, the Federal Institute of Provolution faced its share of criticism from various parties. Various anthropist groups were opposed to the FIP's goals, and made various attempts to shift public perception against the Institute. Although a minority did actually commit acts of violence against the FIP, its employees or provoved subjects, such acts were considerably less common than the peaceful protests. The reasons for this ranged from the effectiveness of hyperturing security, to a fear of transapient retaliation which curbed potential attacks even before their inception, to an overall societal preference for non-violent acts and solutions. Often the anthropist parties opposed to the FIP claimed that humanity shouldn't share civilized space with "too many intelligent species". These thoughts were typically grounded in prejudice, human chauvinism, genuine concerns that the new provolves wouldn't fare well in First Federation society or fears that the emergence of a new provolved clade would shift the overall interstellar society in unpleasant directions.

Conservative parties and individuals also commonly opposed and criticized the Institute. Many of these weren't actually opposed to the act of provolution per se and instead focused their efforts on slowing down the FIP's provolution projects rather than stopping them entirely. A number of such conservatives worried that the provolution of too many species in what they considered a short period of time would create more diversity than the First Federation infrastructure was capable of handling. The most famous sophont defending this view was the SI:1 administrator Moonlight Reflections on an Irregular Mirror. Other conservatives were more concerned with maintaining their real or imagined privileges, believed that the Federation had more pressing socioeconomic needs than the creation of new sophont species or simply feared change and the unknown. The FIP typically handled this criticism by publicly arguing in favor of its ideals and through other memetic means.

Certain fundamentalist religious organisations also composed a notable fraction of the FIP's critics. Many of these groups argued that provolution was a sinful act or a direct defiance of the will of God/the gods/the divine principle/their holy prophets/sacred megacorporations/etc. Some were uncomfortable with the provolution of specific species, such as animals that were employed as food, pets, or beasts of burden. Others were unwilling to accept the provolution of animals considered holy creatures or beasts too alien to possess or be given a soul. Given the level of acceptance of provolves in First Federation society, the FIP had to do less to address this kind of criticism and defend themselves than an equivalent Interplanetary Age organisation would have had to do.

Lastly, a major fraction of the FIP's critics were equivalent institutes, provolution-focused megacorporations and pro-sophontist groups and individuals. A significant part of their criticism focused on what they perceived as overly restrictive legal protocols or as counter-productive approaches. These competitors often urged the FIP to update its protocols, in line with the most recent legal and scientific developments. Up to the end of its golden age, the FIP often kept this kind of opposition at bay through a near-monopoly on the field of provolution and its related ethics. Past this period, however, the FIP began to face more scandals, a larger number of capable competitors and internal schisms between local branches. Since the institute was no longer able to maintain its previous moral standing or its legal and scientific importance, it also became vulnerable to critics of its reliability and relevance.

Legacy

Over the course of its existence, the Federal Institute of Provolution produced 27 novel provolve clades and templates. Close to a hundred clades were created using FIP licenses, and among these were completely novel clades such as the first invertebrate provolves. While now obsolete, the technical and ethical guidelines developed by the FIP helped to advance the field of provolution while ensuring the rights of many provolves were protected. For this reason, many historians agree that the FIP was one of the main driving forces of the Neuro-Potential Period of the history of provolution.

After the FIP was dissolved, the Federation failed to revive the organisation, preferring to deal locally with its daughter institutes. However, when the Terragen Federation was founded, another instance of the FIP was created. This institute with the same name became part of the Terragen Federation's administration. Like its predecessor, it provides provolution licenses and supports provolve rights throughout the empire. In addition to its profound expertise in classical animal and plant provolution, the modern FIP is also known for its proficiency with xenoprovolution, the creation and provolution of envomes, and the development of more exotic provolves such as magmatter-based lifeforms. It is currently led by one SI:5 administrator, often referred to as Enki or the Big Boss Node, who is also responsible for the Federation Institute of Vecs and the Federation Center for Cybernetic Progress.



 
Related Articles
 
Appears in Topics
InstitutesProvolutionProvolve
 
Development Notes
Text by Liam Jones
Initially published on 26 July 2017.

Original article by Liam Jones, created 26 July 2017
Expanded and rewritten by Rakuen07 on April 11, 2025
 
 
>