There are many reasons to doubt that the Seasteading Institute will realize its vision of floating cities in the sea; but there are at least two reasons to think that seasteading may prove to be more successful than past efforts to escape the grasp of the world’s governments. First, the project’s planners are pragmatic-at least by the standards of their predecessors-pursuing an incrementalist strategy and focusing primarily on solving short-term engineering problems. Second, they recently announced a half-million dollar pledge from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, giving them the resources to begin serious engineering and design work. While there are many obstacles to be overcome before they will have even a functioning prototype-to say nothing of a floating metropolis-their project doesn’t seem as obviously hopeless as most of the efforts that have preceded it.
(via GPOD)
(The founders of the Seasteading Institute would do well to study the problems of Pitcairn)
June 17, 2008 at 8:28 am
Two successful seasteading projects: Venice and Amsterdam.
June 20, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Unsuccessful seasteading project: New Orleans.
June 22, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Considering the start-up costs, these sea cities need to have a better reason to exist than freedom from governments and a better reason for governments to respect their rights.
Recently one has come into being:
The increase in biofuel interest and the foreseeable food shortage, coupled with the ocean’s increasing pollution finds a synergistic solution in farming vast acreage of algae (spirillina (sp?)) for food, fuel while providing the benefit of helping ocean toxicity and fish populations.