Category Archives: Seasteading

A plan to build self-sufficient floating cities outside of national borders features in thelatest movie from our Dezeen x MINI Living video series.

The Seasteading Institute is a non-profit organisation founded by political economic theorist Patri Friedman and Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel.

The organisation aims to build "start-up countries" at sea, known as "seasteads", that offer greater freedom for innovation in science, technology and politics.

According to its website, the institute's goal is to develop "open spaces for experimenting with new societies" in order to "allow the next generation of pioneers to peacefully test new ideas for how to live together".

The company claims that building floating cities will offeran alternative to conventional models of governance, with few regulations.

The government of French Polynesia has signed an agreement with The Seasteading Institute to cooperate on the creation of a pilot city in a lagoon near Tahiti.

The test city, entitled the Floating City Project, will act as proof-of-concept for the organisation's plan to build further settlements at sea.

The Seasteading Institute plans to build the city using existing floating architecturetechnology developed by Dutch engineering firm Deltasync.

The city would be built on amodular networkof rectangular andpentagonalplatforms sothat itcould bereconfiguredaccording tothe needs of its inhabitants.

The reinforced concrete platforms will support three-storey buildings includingapartments, offices and hotels for up to 100 years, according to a feasibility report produced by Deltasync.

It is expected thatbetween 250 and 300 people will live aboard the settlement. Development of the city is expected to beginin early 2018.

This movie is part of Dezeen x MINI Living Initiative, a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how architecture and design can contribute to a brighter urban future through a series of videos and talks.

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The Seasteading Institute's floating cities are designed for unregulated innovation - Dezeen

Sacramento Bee

What does a boat party have to do with reinventing government? Find out at Ephemerisle Sacramento Bee The goal of his Burning Man on water was to tickle the imagination of like-minded free-thinkers and generate interest in seasteading floating colonies free from existing governments. With funding from PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, the young ...

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What does a boat party have to do with reinventing government? Find out at Ephemerisle - Sacramento Bee

The Auditor-General will not be conducting an inquiry into the decision to grant citizenship to San Francisco-based billionaire investor Peter Thiel, said deputy controller and Auditor-General Greg Schollum in response to a request from Green Party MP Denise Roche.

Ms Roche called on the Auditor-General to look into the decision after it came to light that in June 2011 then Minister of Internal Affairs Nathan Guy, approved Mr Thiel's application for citizenship under the "exceptional circumstances" provisions of the Citizenship Act.

According to Mr Schollum, the provisions allow the minister to grant citizenship to someone who may not satisfy the normal criteria for citizenship, but where granting citizenship "would be in the public interest because of exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian or other nature relating to the applicant".

He noted act gives the minister "broad discretion" and the section does not specify what these terms mean or how the minister's discretion should be exercised. "This means the legislation allows for considerable flexibility on a case-by-case basis," he said.

He said the issues largely come down to policy questions - for example, whether the legislation strikes the right balance for citizen decisions - or legal questions such as whether the provisions were applied correctly. "These are not questions that the Auditor-General generally has authority to answer," Mr Schollum said.

Mr Thiel is a member of US President Donald Trump's transition team, having donated to his campaign, and is a long-time libertarian who has in the past invested in the exploration of seasteading, the development of a floating city in international waters which could serve as a politically autonomous settlement.

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Auditor-General won't investigate Thiel citizenship - Otago Daily Times

The Auditor-General won't be conducting an inquiry into the decision to grant citizenship to San Francisco-based billionaire investor Peter Thiel, said deputy controller and auditor-general Greg Schollum in response to a request from Green Party MP Denise Roche.

Roche called on the auditor-general to look into the decision after it came to light that in June 2011 then Minister of Internal Affairs Nathan Guy, approved Thiel's application for citizenship under the "exceptional circumstances" provisions of the Citizenship Act.

According to Schollum, the provisions allow the minister to grant citizenship to someone who may not satisfy the normal criteria for citizenship, but where granting citizenship "would be in the public interest because of exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian or other nature relating to the applicant".

He noted act gives the minister "broad discretion" and the section does not specify what these terms mean or how the minister's discretion should be exercised. "This means the legislation allows for considerable flexibility on a case-by-case basis," he said.

He said the issues largely come down to policy questions - for example, whether the legislation strikes the right balance for citizen decisions - or legal questions such as whether the provisions were applied correctly. "These are not questions that the Auditor-General generally has authority to answer," said Schollum.

Thiel is a member of US President Donald Trump's transition team, having donated to his campaign, and is a long-time libertarian who has in the past invested in the exploration of seasteading, the development of a floating city in international waters which could serve as a politically autonomous settlement.

(BusinessDesk)

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Auditor-General won't be investigating Peter Thiel's NZ citizenship - The National Business Review

As the world population continues to rise and open space becomes more scarce, water might become the next human frontier, in the form of a floating city.

According to a report from news service Agence France-Presse, Dutch researchers have a model for such livable space, which could include homes, farms and parks. The news agency says the floating city concept could become a reality within a couple of decades for the Netherlands, a small country in Europe where space is at a premium and which has a history of taming water for human habitation Holland, including the capital Amsterdam, is notorious for its canals, which have been used for defense, irrigation, for travel and for improving city habitability.

Read: Does Climate Change Threaten Your Cup of Coffee?

In these times of rising sea levels, overpopulated cities and a rising number of activities on the seas, building up the dykes and pumping out the sands is perhaps not the most efficient solution, Olaf Waals, from the Maritime Research Institute of the Netherlands, told AFP. Floating ports and cities are an innovative solution which reflect the Dutch maritime tradition.

The Netherlands concept, a project called Space at Sea, includes 87 triangular pieces of various sizes that would come together to make almost 2 square miles of space, a floating island of concrete or steel that would be anchored to the seafloor and attached to the shore. For now, however, it is just a small wooden model.

Amsterdam is a city known for its canals, the Dutch way of harvesting water for travel, irrigation and improving habitability. But will the Netherlands soon be building entire cities on the water? Photo: Pixabay, public domain

According to AFP, experts are exploring how such a structure would withstand wind and storm conditions, how it could be made self-sufficient in terms of energy usage, and how it would affect marine life.

Technically it could be feasible in 10 to 20 years from today, Waals told the news agency.

If floating cities were to become the homes of the future, there is plenty of space to work with: Oceans cover more than 70 percent of the Earths surface.

The Netherlands is not the only nation to explore this idea. The French Polynesia government, for example, is thinking about building a bunch of habitable floating islands in its area of the South Pacific Ocean. The Seasteading Institute in California, a group geared toward making such water cities a reality, is behind the idea. Part of Seasteadings goal is to help people who in the future could be displaced by sea level rise drowning their current land-based homes.

Read: Is It Going to Rain in the Middle East? Maybe in 10,000 Years

Part of the concept requires self-sustainability, in terms of necessities like agriculture and health care, which makes it more complicated than it sounds.

The idea might work in French Polynesia because there arent a lot of high waves one factor that would threaten an ocean settlement. In that respect it might represent a pioneer project that could set a precedent for others to follow.

With space on land running out, the Netherlands will have to divert back toward the water, MARIN director Bas Buchner said, according to AFP. And we have always been pioneers in this fight.

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Floating City: Will Rising Sea Levels Force People To Move Into Ocean Homes? - International Business Times

The Seasteading Institute in California has an audacious mission: to establish floating societies that will restore the environment, enrich the poor, cure the sick, and liberate humanity from politicians.

Like in the 19th century, when many people left the cities of the Eastern US to gain independence by claiming a patch of land and working it which wasknown as "homesteading" "seasteaders" hope to create a new social, economic and political frontier on the ocean.

Thats the vision of seavangelist Joe Quirk, author of the new book, "Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick and Liberate Humanity from Politicians."

Quirk got involved in the seasteading movement after attending his 10th Burning Man festival. He says he became fascinated by watching rules emerge that are not predictable from their initial parameters. You start imagining, what if we could have more societies like these? What if they didn't just last a week, but all year round? Quirk says. What if we could have hundreds [of these societies]? What interesting ways that people could get along would we discover?

Someone introduced him to Patri Friedman, founder of the Seasteading Institute, who told him about the principles of seasteading, of building floating cities on the sea. As soon as Quirk got home, he found Friedmans blog on the internet. That,he says,was his conversion moment.

Patri identified the problem that governance doesn't get better as quickly as other forms of technology because it doesn't vary or select except through revolution and war, Quirk says. If society floated, and if these floating societies were disassemblable and reassemblable according to the choices of the residents, that would be variation by governments and selection by citizens.

So, Quirk contacted the Seasteading Institute and offered to co-write a populist book with Patri, not just about the ideas, he says, but about the actual people trying to make it happen, who I call aquapreneurs.

About a year after the Seasteading Institute was founded, the group began an experiment called Ephemerisle, a name that combines ephemera with isle. It's an annual festival in Northern CaliforniasSacramento Delta that has been described as Burning Man on the water.

If you want to attend, you have to bring your own land, Quirk says. So people rent boats, they get giant platforms anything that can be put together to float. The idea was that, as people learn the lessons of living together on the water and solve technical challenges, it would slowly expand and move out to the sea.

Despite some ups and downs, Ephemerisle demonstrated the social principles of seasteading exactly as originally described by Patri Freedman, Quirk says.

He elucidated that if you lived on the fluid frontier and land was modular and disassemblable, people who didn't get along could vote with their houseand go form their own separate jurisdiction, he explains. As long as people can choose among them voluntarily, we think we'd create many different solutions for how to live together, which would set examples that could change the world.

Creating cities on the water poses huge engineering challenges. Building in shallow waters is technically possible right now, but building in high waves is so difficult and expensive that only fossil fuel companies can afford it, Quirk says. So, the Seasteading Institute is starting small, with a project in French Polynesia.

We're negotiating with them to create a special, legal island known as a seazone in their territorial waters, so we can apply existing Dutch technology for sustainable floating islands in shallow waters to demonstrate the business model two or three pilot platforms in a very small and nonthreatening way, such that we would absorb the risk, Quirk explains.

French Polynesia is an ideal place to start because its close enough to the equator that it doesn't experience high waves, and its in very warm waters, Quirk says. It's not threatened by cyclones and it is blessed with lots of natural wave breakers, from atolls to lagoons, and it also has lots of very deep water. This is the blue frontier, where we can expand seasteading incrementally.

Seasteading questions a whole host of assumptions about how people live together and govern themselves,Quirk says.From sustainable constructionto agriculture to health care, seasteading requires its planners and participants to rethink just about everything about living on land. Seasteading is also an immediate solution to the looming problem of sea-level rise, which is already threatening coastal countries, especially in the Pacific islands, Quirk says.

French Polynesia sees itself as the blue frontier and they are initiating the blue economy, Quirk says. They want to get this started in French Polynesia to demonstrate that this can work If people like these floating nations, and they are no threat to the world, and they're providing better solutions and they are as delightful as cruise ships, I think we have a humanitarian case to petition the nations of the world to recognize these floating nations as sovereign.

This article is based on an interview that aired on PRIs Living on Earth with Steve Curwood.

From Living on Earth2017 World Media Foundation

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The 'seasteading' movement imagines floating cities in the sea - WBFO

The Seasteading Institute in California has an audacious mission: to establish floating societies that will restore the environment, enrich the poor, cure the sick, and liberate humanity from politicians.

Like in the 19th century, when many people left the cities of the Eastern US to gain independence by claiming a patch of land and working it which wasknown as "homesteading" "seasteaders" hope to create a new social, economic and political frontier on the ocean.

Thats the vision of seavangelist Joe Quirk, author of the new book, "Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick and Liberate Humanity from Politicians."

Quirk got involved in the seasteading movement after attending his 10th Burning Man festival. He says he became fascinated by watching rules emerge that are not predictable from their initial parameters. You start imagining, what if we could have more societies like these? What if they didn't just last a week, but all year round? Quirk says. What if we could have hundreds [of these societies]? What interesting ways that people could get along would we discover?

Someone introduced him to Patri Friedman, founder of the Seasteading Institute, who told him about the principles of seasteading, of building floating cities on the sea. As soon as Quirk got home, he found Friedmans blog on the internet. That,he says,was his conversion moment.

Patri identified the problem that governance doesn't get better as quickly as other forms of technology because it doesn't vary or select except through revolution and war, Quirk says. If society floated, and if these floating societies were disassemblable and reassemblable according to the choices of the residents, that would be variation by governments and selection by citizens.

So, Quirk contacted the Seasteading Institute and offered to co-write a populist book with Patri, not just about the ideas, he says, but about the actual people trying to make it happen, who I call aquapreneurs.

About a year after the Seasteading Institute was founded, the group began an experiment called Ephemerisle, a name that combines ephemera with isle. It's an annual festival in Northern CaliforniasSacramento Delta that has been described as Burning Man on the water.

If you want to attend, you have to bring your own land, Quirk says. So people rent boats, they get giant platforms anything that can be put together to float. The idea was that, as people learn the lessons of living together on the water and solve technical challenges, it would slowly expand and move out to the sea.

Despite some ups and downs, Ephemerisle demonstrated the social principles of seasteading exactly as originally described by Patri Freedman, Quirk says.

He elucidated that if you lived on the fluid frontier and land was modular and disassemblable, people who didn't get along could vote with their houseand go form their own separate jurisdiction, he explains. As long as people can choose among them voluntarily, we think we'd create many different solutions for how to live together, which would set examples that could change the world.

Creating cities on the water poses huge engineering challenges. Building in shallow waters is technically possible right now, but building in high waves is so difficult and expensive that only fossil fuel companies can afford it, Quirk says. So, the Seasteading Institute is starting small, with a project in French Polynesia.

We're negotiating with them to create a special, legal island known as a seazone in their territorial waters, so we can apply existing Dutch technology for sustainable floating islands in shallow waters to demonstrate the business model two or three pilot platforms in a very small and nonthreatening way, such that we would absorb the risk, Quirk explains.

French Polynesia is an ideal place to start because its close enough to the equator that it doesn't experience high waves, and its in very warm waters, Quirk says. It's not threatened by cyclones and it is blessed with lots of natural wave breakers, from atolls to lagoons, and it also has lots of very deep water. This is the blue frontier, where we can expand seasteading incrementally.

Seasteading questions a whole host of assumptions about how people live together and govern themselves,Quirk says.From sustainable constructionto agriculture to health care, seasteading requires its planners and participants to rethink just about everything about living on land. Seasteading is also an immediate solution to the looming problem of sea-level rise, which is already threatening coastal countries, especially in the Pacific islands, Quirk says.

French Polynesia sees itself as the blue frontier and they are initiating the blue economy, Quirk says. They want to get this started in French Polynesia to demonstrate that this can work If people like these floating nations, and they are no threat to the world, and they're providing better solutions and they are as delightful as cruise ships, I think we have a humanitarian case to petition the nations of the world to recognize these floating nations as sovereign.

This article is based on an interview that aired on PRIs Living on Earth with Steve Curwood.

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The 'seasteading' movement imagines floating cities in the sea - PRI

French Polynesia is expected to get the first floating city in a few years from now. (Reuters)

Many would remember the 1960s cartoon series, Jetsons, (with a later syndication in the late 1980s) featuring the eponymous family in a futuristic utopia called the Orbit City. The Jetsons lived in Skypad Apartments, a building that stood far above the surface of terra firma, supported by what looked like stilts. Such atmospheric dwelling may soon come to be in real life. Over 260,000 people have applied to live in Asgardia, a new city that is to come up some 400 km from the Earths surface. The plan is to send satellites along with space platforms that can interconnect to form a space city. Asgardia says that one of its main goals is to protect the Earth from space threats like solar flares, debris and that the ultimate goal is to build a protective shield around the planet, it is not clear how it will be able to achieve this. The first launch is due this September, with next two launches scheduled for 2018 and 2019. The first inhabitants are expected to settle in eight years. Residents, selected via a random draw, have already created their own charter, parliament and have even selected their first president. Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, who first conceptualised the idea of a space nation, is to be the first nominal head of Asgardia. Although Ashurbeyli is trying hard for UN membership for Asgardia, concerns remain on what laws Asgardians will abide by.

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Creating new nations or cities is not a new phenomenon, and Asgardia may not even be the only space city in the near future. French Polynesia is expected to get the first floating city in a few years from now. Seasteading, an NGO, has been working to establish autonomous, mobile communities on seaborne platforms operating in international waters. But can these new nations decide their own destiny? The idea behind most new cities and autonomous regions is providing a new start for a better society so that they dont repeat the mistakes that other nations have made.

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Jetsons in reality soon? A city in Earth orbit may not be too far away in future - Financial Express

Peter Thiel, who was granted New Zealand citizenship in 2011 despite only visiting the country a handful of times, is a storied US investor and entrepreneur.

US President Donald Trump, at the time president-elect, with Peter Thiel in December 2016. Photo: AFP

Officials today revealed Mr Thiel had spent only 12 days in New Zealand at the time of his application, after the Department of Internal Affairs was told by the Ombudsman to release the information, deeming it in the public interest.

Normally a permanent resident has to spend more than 70 percent of their time in New Zealand over five years before they can apply for citizenship.

His application was supported by Xero founder Rod Drury and Trade Me founder Sam Morgan.

Mr Thiel, 49, is reportedly worth $US2.7 billion after making his fortune in the tech boom in the early 2000s.

Recently, he was a donor to Donald Trump's election campaign and a technology adviser to the president-elect.

Biographies of Mr Thiel do not say he was a superlative coder. He was, instead, a maths and chess wizz. In high school he topped a California-wide maths test and ranked seventh in the US in chess in his early teens.

Mr Thiel read Ayn Rand and admired Ronald Reagan at school and went on to study philosophy and law at Stanford University - where he founded a conservative newspaper.

He then spent time as a commodities lawyer and derivatives trader but was dissatisfied.

He moved to California in the mid '90s at the start of the tech boom and co-founded PayPal. He was one of the first investors in Facebook and has since started a raft of tech, finance and venture capital firms.

The Seasteading Institute, which Thiel has given money to, wants to build a floating city in the Pacific. Photo: Supplied / The Seasteading Institute

Mr Thiel is known as a libertarian, and in an essay in 2009 he declared that freedom and democracy were incompatible and that technology was the only way to make a difference in the world.

He advocated exploring the possibilities of colonising space as an "escape from world politics", but thought "seasteading" (making permanent floating cities on the ocean away from the grasp of national governments) was more realistic than space travel.

He co-founded the Seasteading Institute, which works to make that a reality, and has also backed groups working on extending the human lifespan.

In 2014 on Bloomberg TV he said he was taking pills in an effort to extend his life, and he is reportedly interested in the process of parabiosis - injecting oneself with blood donated by young people - something that has been satirised on the HBO television show Silicon Valley.

TV personality Terry Bollea, aka Hulk Hogan, leaves a news conference in 2012 after discussing legal action being brought on his behalf. Photo: AFP

In 2012-13, he gave $US10m to Hulk Hogan to help sue news site Gawker, which had made public a sex tape involving the wrestler.

Hogan took Gawker to court demanding $US140m for breach of privacy, and won, which led to the site shutting down. It eventually settled with the wrestler for $US31m.

The New York Times reported that Mr Thiel supported Hogan because he wanted to curb Gawker's "bullying". The website had outed him as being gay in 2007.

In January the New Yorker published an article about a group of tech and finance executives devoted to survivalism - getting off the grid and preparing for a coming societal collapse.

It said New Zealand was seen as a "favoured refuge in the event of a cataclysm" by the wealthy in Silicon Valley.

The article did not say whether Mr Thiel was among that group, but said he was among high-net-worth individuals to have bought property in this country.

And one last fun fact: Mr Thiel seems to be a Tolkien fanatic. He has named a number of companies for characters in the author's books, some of which require an expert level knowledge of Middle Earth to discern, including: Rivendell LLC, Mithril Capital, Arda Capital and Valar Ventures.

Maybe that's another reason why he was drawn to New Zealand?

- RNZ / BBC

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Who is Peter Thiel? | Radio New Zealand News - Radio New Zealand

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Seasteading: New Societies on the Floating Frontier listen / download Californias Seasteading Institute has an audacious claim: establishing floating societies will restore the environment, enrich the poor, cure the sick, and liberate humanity from politicians. Seavangelist Joe Quirk, author of the new book Seasteading, describes this bold vision.

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