Jillian, you might be particularly interested in this. I heard an interview with one of the leaders of this project and he said it's largely designed as a way to test out different ways to run a society.
Click here for the source.
A Brief Introduction to the Seasteading Institute
The Movement
What is "Seasteading"?
Seasteading means to create permanent dwellings on the ocean - homesteading the high seas. A seastead, like in the picture above, is a structure meant for permanent occupation on the ocean.
Why would you want to do that?
Because the world needs a new frontier, a place where those who are dissatisfied with our current civilization can go to build a different (and hopefully better) one.
Currently, it is very difficult to experiment with alternative social systems on a small scale. Countries are so enormous that no individual can make much difference in how they work, and the powers-that-be are deeply entrenched. Seasteaders believe that government shouldn't be like the cellphone or operating system industries, with few choices and high customer-lock-in. Instead, they envision something more like web 2.0, where many small governments serve many niche markets, a dynamic system where small groups experiment, and everyone copies what works, discards what doesn't, and remixes the remainder to try again.
Think about all the hot air and argumentation about a whole host of different political issues - freedom vs. security, absolute wealth vs. inequality, strong family vs. tolerance, open vs. closed borders, whatever the topic du jour is. Instead of deciding them through rhetoric, or voting on a few representatives to decide them for tens or hundreds of millions of people at once, imagine if we could try them each on a small scale and see what happens. If people could create societies with different priorities - the environment, civil liberties, economic freedom, religious values - we'd be able to see how well these ideas actually work in practice. In some cases, certain approaches will work so well (or terribly) that everyone (or no one) will use them too. In others, it will turn out to be a matter of preference, in which case we'll be giving people the choice to choose to live in whatever small society is closest to their ideal.
In short, we seasteaders are people who, whatever our ideals, want to stop arguing about them, stop proselytizing them, and start living them. And it looks like homesteading the oceans is our best opportunity.
Is that really possible? How would it work?
It's hard to give a short answer to this. The briefest answer we have is to point to the cruise ship industry as evidence that providing power, water, food, and internet on the ocean is not only possible but can be profitable. Our lifestyle and business model will be very different - based on permanent occupation and businesses beyond tourism - but cruise ships at least demonstrate that the basics can be covered without breaking the bank. It remains for us to show, by building small seastead prototypes, that comfortable, spacious, permanent dwellings can also be built at reasonable cost.
And similarly, while we don't yet know if there is a realistic path to recognized sovereignty, the history of the cruise ship industry demonstrates that a great deal of practical autonomy can be achieved using flags of convenience. If the idea still seems crazy (the bad kind), we have answers to some of the common objections in our FAQ, and we have written a book with much more detail.
The Institute
We (Patri & Wayne) had been spreading the word about our ideas for 5+ years via blogging, research, a book, and talks, and in 2007 we decided that interest in this movement had reached the point where it was worth creating a formal organization as a vehicle for fundraising and research. So we founded a nonprofit organization, The Seasteading Institute, with the mission:
Establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems.
Focus Areas
TSI has 3 main focus areas. Follow the links for more details:
* Community: Inspire a social movement around our mission. Build a membership of people who are committed to and passionate about seasteading, and see it as the answer to the world's most pressing problems. Create a network of potential residents who have the skills and resources needed to make a vibrant new city. Establish revenue to enable the Institute to operate in perpetuity.
* Engineering: Prove that our plan is viable by building a safe, cost-effective, gorgeous seastead, based in the San Francisco Bay and able to travel along the coast. Use it for publicity to grow the community, and as a platform for research.
* Research: Explore the core seasteading requirements: Structure (not sinking), Autonomy (getting left alone), and Infrastructure (having light, heat, food, etc.). When current solutions are sufficient for our needs, learn them. When they aren't, invent new ones. Secondarily, advance seasteading technologies through grant-funded research and partnerships.
Current Status
As you can read in our press release, we have secured $500,000 in initial funding, which we'll be using in 2008 and 2009 to achieve the goals described above. Please use the navigation bar above to learn more about our ideas and progress. At the very least, you will probably want to subscribe to the Press Releases (RSS) to see major updates. If you are interested in more frequent news, there is the Captain's Blog (RSS) and the discussion forums.
We hope that you will be inspired to join our community and help us change the world.
Edit: Oops, forgot to post the link.
http://seasteading.org/learn-more/intro
