So I recently got an excuse rant about my opinions on federated tech. I think it's pretty much the best we can hope for in terms of liberating tech, with very few niches where fully distributed tech is preferable.
Needing a server places users under the power of the server administrator. Why do we bother? "No gods, no masters, no admins!' I hear you shout. Well, there's a couple reasons...
Maybe using software is just an intrinsically centralized activity. One or a few people design and code it, and an unlimited number of people can digitally replicate and use it. Sure, it may be free software that everyone can inspect and modify... but how many people will really bother? (Nevermind that most people don't even have the skills necessary.)
Okay, so we always kind of rely on a central-ish dev team when we use tech. Why rely on admins on top of that? I believe the vast vast majority of people doesn't have the skills and time to operate a truly independent node of a fully distributed tech. Let's take Jami as an example:
"With the default name server (ns.jami.net), the usernames are registered on an Ethereum blockchain."
So a feature of Jami is (for most users) implemented as a centralized service. Yikes. You could build and run your own name server (with less embarrassing tech choices hopefully), but who will really bother?
But say you bothered, wouldn't it be nice if your friends could use that name server too, and gain a little independence? That sounds a lot like decentralized/federated tech.
Keeping a decent service online is a pain in the butt. Installing SW updates, managing backups, paying for hardware and name services... nevermind just the general bothering to understand all that mess. And moderation, don't forget moderation. I'm saying it's not for everyone (and we should appreciate the fuck out of [local admin]).
I believe that servers and admins are our best bet for actual non-centralized tech. A tech-literate person tending a service for a small- to medium-size community is much more feasible than every person running their independent node (which will probably still depend on something centralized).
And maybe that's just the way we bring good ol' division of labour to the Internet. You have your shoemaker, your baker, your social media admin. A respectable and useful position in society. And they lived happily ever after.
The writing is far better than what I might produce, so I won't talk about that. I do have a comment about the themes/politics.
I can totally understand the theme of handicap/neglect as a feeling that the marketing would evoke. What goes mostly unexamined is that these guys know what they are doing when they are "optimizing" fetuses. I agree that the first stages of gene editing would function like expensive new healthcare, and equity of access would be an issue. But once as much money as you're describing is circulating in the system, it would have to turn into fetishizing arbitrary shit. (You kind of touched on this with the million dollar retina color.)
I would love to read a story about how the creators of this tech don't understand what good they have created and immediately start circling around their incoherent conceptions of human perfection. I want to read about biohackers getting sued for trying to use Evolve's proprietary lab techniques to develop inexpensive personal gene therapies. I want to read about self-help groups for rich kids whose parents followed a gene-editing fad and effectively gave them a man-made niche disability.
If we grant gene editing to be transformational for human life, I would want to work out why different people want to use it. On one hand by engineers who want to make available remedies to common suffering. On the other hand capitalists and pundits who have used genetical deficiency to explain away every failure and irritating opinion in their life, god forbid they have to do some actual introspection.
I suppose my suggestion as a partisan hack is: I want my enemies mocked harder.