© YouTubeThe Floating City of Artisanopolis gives us a preview of what sea-based civilizations may look like in the future.
When
Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, helped launch the Seasteading Institute in 2008, it sounded like a libertarian pipe dream —
floating cities free from government meddling (no regulation, no taxes) that would be testing grounds for technological, social and political innovation.But this past January 13, the dream came one step closer to reality when the Seastead Institute
signed a deal with French Polynesia that lays the legal groundwork for the
world's first semi-autonomous floating city-state.French Polynesia is a cluster of more than 100 islands in the South Pacific, the biggest and best-known being Tahiti. Like other coastal and island nations in the Pacific, French Polynesia is courting investment in the so-called
"blue economy," the sustainable development of offshore energy production, wild-catch fisheries, aquaculture and tourism. The Polynesians are less interested in the seasteaders libertarian politics than their promise of delivering a high-tech floating village that will not only provide jobs for Polynesian workers, but attract investment dollars for Polynesian entrepreneurs.
© Seasteading.comAnother proposed model of a Seasteading floating city.
Joe Quirk is the Seasteading Institute's staff "Seavangelist" and author of the forthcoming
Seasteading: How Ocean Cities Will Change the World, written with Seasteading Institute co-founder Patri Friedman. Quirk was part of a 10-person team who visited French Polynesia back in September.
"This was a Polynesian-initiated project," Quirk told Seeker. "They reached out to us. It's an ideal country for seasteading, and they think we're the perfect industry for what they want to do with regard to the blue economy."
The long-term vision of seasteading is to construct fully autonomous floating cities on the high seas where the "next generation of pioneers [can] peacefully test new ideas for government." But for this first, proof-of-concept project, the Seasteading Institute was searching for an island partner with protected shallow waters and an openness to
new type of economic model called a SeaZone.
Comment: Test tube experimental habitation riding on waves of change.