The Seasteading Institute

I’ve created a Flickr Group for seasteading images.  If you’d like to be able to add photos, just email us your Flickr username and some example pictures.  You can also subscribe to it by RSS.  We plan to integrate the feed into the site at some point, but using a mature external service seemed like the easiest thing for now.  Here is a live slideshow of the photostream:

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Sorry this is late, I’ve been sick since Friday, and a bit overwhelmed with the email deluge resulting from our big media week last week.  Plus Monday was a holiday, so Friday will be my seasteading day this week.  But I wanted to get this email out because there’s lots in it and will be lots more on Monday, I expect.

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As I mentioned in the OTC trip report, there is a huge amount of uncertainty in our cost estimates, because we aren’t sure how the expense of a seastead will compare to that of an oil platform.  Since we believe that the success of seasteading hinges on whether it can be done at a reasonable price, this will be one of our key areas of research this year. Continue reading →

We seem to be having some database issues with the website today.  Please bear with us. 

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 Just as described in Wayne’s original seasteading paper, Rich Sowa built an island out of plastic bottles in net bags.  Here’s a video:

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 Like libertarians, or economists.

The Reason & Marginal Revolution posts about generated significant direct traffic.  But the avalanche of net recognition (slashdot, gizmodo, etc.) didn’t start until the wired.com article.  The Wired article brought us about 3-4x the direct traffic as Reason, and 30x the indirect traffic.

My conclusion is that it’s important for marketing efforts to avoid echo chambers.  Seasteading is interesting and inspiring to many more groups than libertarians, and we should pitch it accordingly.

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There is a lot of debate and worry about climate change.  Most are worried about warming and sea level rises, which would cover coastal land and reduce usable landmass.  Others are worried about global cooling.  A significant swing in either direction would substantially change the latitudes at which human life is most comfortable.

Which is where seasteads come in.  The more of the earth’s population and economy which are on seasteads, the more robustness the world has against climate change.  Unlike traditional buildings on land, seasteads are geographically flexible.  Our main motivation for this is to empower people to create and choose societies to live in, but like any great idea, it has all sorts of accidental benefits as well.

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Alexis Madrigal, who wrote the wired story, is interviewed on NPRs Bryant Park Project.  It’s great to have passionate people out there evangelizing for us – Thanks Alexis!  Also see coverage on Gizmodo and Slashdot, which are…um…somewhat less evangelical .

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But does anyone else think it’s weird that on the one hand our vision gets called crazy…and on the other hand, it gets evaluated based on a video game?

Rich Nerds Want To Build A Utopian City In The Ocean And…Wait A Minute…

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Today’s xkcd suggests geohashing – using the date and Dow opening to generate a random physical location for a meetup.  It’s fun to think about this method being used to coordinate Ephemerisle gatherings.  I can see the method being both better and worse on the ocean because of it’s relative homogeneity – every place is like every other place.  So you don’t have the failure mode of randomly generating a location that’s difficult or impossible to reach, but you don’t get Continue reading →