About TSI
Mission
To further the establishment and growth of permanent, autonomous ocean communities, enabling innovation with new political and social systems.
History
The idea of seasteading was first born when Wayne Gramlich stumbled across the Oceania Project. While impressed with the concept, he immediately recognized that the enormous overhead would make it impossible to get such a program off the ground. He wrote his own proposal for a way to live at sea that was smaller and more incremental than other, similar projects. He posted his ideas on the web, which is how they came to the attention of Patri Friedman.
What attracted Patri to the idea of seasteading was the notion of being able to approach government from the same constantly evolving, crowd-sourced, innovative perspectives that are fundamental to the tech industry. When he found Wayne’s proposal on the web, he was immediately struck by its practical approach grounded in fundamentally sound engineering principles. In seasteading he saw the possibility to approach government the way that developers approached the web. If brilliant minds and passionate dedication could create Web 2.0, why couldn’t they create Government 2.0?
Wayne and Patri discovered that they lived only a few miles apart, and quickly began collaborating. Together they wrote a book on the subject of seasteading, and started a blog, which came to the attention of Jeff Lonsdale and his brother Ajay Royan. Joe, Jeff and Ajay approached Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal, about the project, and after meeting with Wayne and Patri, Peter decided to help fund an organization to further research and development of seasteading.
On April 15th, 2008, The Seasteading Institute was officially formed amid a flurry of internet press. Since that time TSI has begun developing a broad range of supporters from around the world. Today, TSI is focused on making seasteading a reality. Engineering designs by Marine Innovation & Technology give a vision of how seasteads could be built, and a small prototype “StudioStead” is in the works for the near future. With this goal in mind, TSI focuses on expanding its membership, evangelizing about seasteading, and bringing together passionate people to create a new frontier.
2009-2010 Strategy
See our 2009-2010 Strategy Document for details about our plans for the next 2 years.
Reports and Key Documents
- 2008 Annual Report
- 2008 Q3 Quarterly Report
- 2009-2010 Strategy Document
- Seasteading Timeline
- ClubStead Engineering Reports