A network state starts as an online community of like-minded people, connected by something—a big idea, an innovation, a commandment—then moves offline into the physical world. Consider Vitalia, a pop-up city on an island off the coast of Honduras that’s focused on prolonging life. Or Praxis, a VC-funded group that wants to build an “eternal city” in the Mediterranean, free from the clutches of America’s flawed democracy. Given the US’s history of “secessionist yearning,” this idea is not new, and “[i]n hindsight, the network state is clearly the dream that Silicon Valley has been building toward since the very beginning,” writes Kaitlyn Tiffany. In her piece for the Atlantic, she recounts her experience from another network state, Zuzalu, the two-month experiment hosted in Montenegro last year and organized by the inventor of Ethereum.
Other than that, the model is choose your own adventure. Hypothetically, Srinivasan suggests network states for people who eat specific diets (kosher, keto), for people who don’t like FDA regulation, for people who don’t like cancel culture, for people who want to live like Benedictine monks, for people who might want to limit internet use by putting public buildings in Faraday cages. It doesn’t matter what the state is based on, but it has to be based on something—a “moral innovation” or a “one commandment.”
These projects are pitched with a sense of grandiosity and grievance: The twisted bureaucracy of democratic governance is constraining humanity. Decades ago, we went to the moon; why don’t we have flying cars? Centuries ago, we praised frontiersmen and pioneers; why are they vilified now? Why all this disdain for the doers and the builders? Why all this red tape in the way of the best and the brightest?
from Longreads https://ift.tt/q8pdEas
Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/owqDtfB
