Reuters | Seasteading Institute aiming for floating cities within decade
February 6, 2012
The Seasteading Intitute | The Seasteading Institute believes that innovative political systems could serve humanity far better than our governments do today. That’s why we work to enable “seasteads” — floating cities — which will give people the opportunity to peacefully test new ideas about how to live together. The most successful will become thriving new societies — inspiring change around the world. We’re creating this future because our governments profoundly affect every aspect of our lives, and improving them would unlock enormous human potential.
Related:
The Seasteading Institute
The Seasteading Institute YouTube channel
Huffington Post | “Floating Cities Could Be A Reality Within Decades”
Video Source: Reuters / The Seasteading Institute
Comments (2)
by gaoptimize
The biggest hurdle will be defense, not technology or funding. Why don’t you think this has been tried on a Canadian, Carabean, Chilean, Norwegian, Greek, or Philipine island? Government’s obsessive perogative is to “profoundly affect every aspect of our lives”. You think if you have a hull and not land that international waters and treaties will defend you from jealous national interests? All the Phalanx guns, Patriot missile systems, and Laser Weapon Systems ever built will not be enough to protect from outside threats, while the real threat will likely arise internally. Eutopians are so naïve.
by Andrew T
I’ve been following Seasteading Institute and their predecessor, the Atlantis Project, for a while now. It would be nice to finally have free-floating city-states, though like nuclear fusion it seems to be perpetually “just 10 more years away.” The biggest hurdle seems to be financial rather than technological.
In addition to continuing erosions of our liberties, the US gov’t has been growing at a financially unsustainable rate for several decades now, with future financial obligations (spending it’s required to do) already well over $100 trillion. Combined with our gov’t proven unwillingness to drastically cut spending (or even reduce the rate of growth), it seems inevitable that at some point in the future–10, maybe 20 years–the US gov’t will implode a la Greece or the former USSR. Many European govt’s are in even worse financial shape, and while China is in a boom right now, their financial system is itself a house of cards propped up by various accounting tricks.
This should be of great concern to transhumanists, because if many of the world’s biggest govt’s fail, they are sure to take their economies with them. Floating city-states like those envisioned by Seasteading offer a possible escape route where research into transhumanist technologies can continue after gov’t labs have been closed for lack of funding and corporate R&D programs shuttered as companies struggle to survive.
I’m sure the first floating cities will probably only be affordable to the rich, but I’m hoping that they soon come within financial reach of the middle class and even the poor. Just as solar power will take off once its per-kW cost drops below that of coal, I hope that once floating cities become cheap enough for middle-class people to live on that they will quickly become a viable–and preferred–alternative to what will likely be the many failed nation-states of the world.