About TSI

Mission

Establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems.

2008-2009 Strategy

TSI has three main focus areas:

  • Community: Inspire a social movement around our mission. Build a membership of people who are committed to and passionate about seasteading, and see it as the answer to the world's most pressing problems. Create a network of potential residents who have the skills and resources needed to make a vibrant new city. Establish revenue to enable the Institute to operate in perpetuity.
  • Baystead: Prove that our plan is viable by building a series of safe, cost-effective, gorgeous seasteads, culminating in a full-sized Coaststead based in the San Francisco Bay and able to travel offshore. Use it for publicity to grow the community, and as a platform for research.
  • Research: Explore the core seasteading requirements: Structure (not sinking), Autonomy (getting left alone), and Infrastructure (having light, heat, food, etc.). When current solutions are sufficient for our needs, learn them. When they aren't, invent new ones. Secondarily, advance seasteading technologies through grant-funded research and partnerships.

Staff

  • Patri Friedman, Executive Director.  Patri writes: "The normal stuff: BS in math from HMC, MS in CS from Stanford, online MBA from Cardean University, worked at Google since 2004 as a software engineer.  The weird stuff: I spent my mid-20's doing wacky things: playing lots of poker, co-founding two intentional communities, reading/blogging about libertarianism and philosophy, trying to write an AI to play online poker, going to festivals like Pennsic and Burning Man (here's my one cool project, flying with balloons) and most importantly writing a book with Wayne about Homesteading The High Seas." patri@seasteading.org
     
  • Wayne Gramlich, Engineering Director.  Wayne says "My quick bio is BSEE + MSEE 1978 from Carnegie-Mellon Univ. I spent 6.5 years at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Computer Science Ph.D program, but I left shortly after my advisor bailed out of MIT to become VP of Engineering at Lotus.  I left without a Ph.D (so called ABD = All But Degree) I spent 12+ years at Sun Microsystems in the compiler and programming environment department.  My last couple of years at Sun were spent bringing the world wide web into Sun -- kicking and screaming I might add.  I wound up being Sun's representative to the World Wide Web Consortium.  I wound up going to a whole bunch of HTML standards meetings.  Eventually, I left Sun, spent a 1.5 years at a small company called Rogue Wave Software.  Then I "retired"." wayne@seasteading.org
    Read Wayne's Seasteading blog posts.
  • More staff coming soon!

Board

  • Patri Friedman: (see above for bio)
  • Wayne Gramlich: (see above for bio)
  • Joe Lonsdale: Mr. Lonsdale is a Principal at Clarium Capital Management, a $5 billion AUM global macro hedge fund based in SF and NYC, where he manages research and trading teams.  Prior to joining Clarium, Mr. Lonsdale worked with the financial arm of PayPal and served as a Special Correspondent to UPI's Business and Technology desk in 2002.  Mr. Lonsdale co-founded and serves as Secretary of the Board at Palantir Technologies, a private company in Palo Alto, CA which develops software analysis products used by governments and financial organizations around the world.  He also serves as a Director at the Institute for Security Analysis in Washington, D.C.  Mr. Lonsdale received a BS in Computer Science from Stanford University.  Read Joe's seasteading blog posts here.
  • Ajay Royan: Ajay is a Principal at Clarium Capital Management. He is active in projects aimed at enhancing individual liberty.
  • Peter Thiel (pic) Peter is founder and president of Clarium, a San Francisco-based hedge fund. He is also a founding partner of The Founder's Fund, a VC firm with early-stage investments in Facebook, LinkedIn, Rapleaf, IronPort, and Powerset, among other startups. Thiel was the initial investor in Facebook, and serves on the company's board of directors. Before Clarium, he was co-founder, chairman and CEO of PayPal, which was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. Prior to PayPal, he ran Thiel Capital Management, the Menlo Park-based predecessor to Clarium, which began with $1 million under management in the fall of 1996. Thiel began his financial career as a derivatives trader at CS Financial Products, after he practiced securities law at Sullivan & Cromwell. He is also active in philanthropic and educational pursuits, sitting on the board of directors of the Pacific Research Institute and the board of visitors of Stanford Law School.

    • History

    • Wayne's version: "My interest in seasteading came from stumbling across the web site http://www.oceania.org/. I liked the concept, but hated the spend billions ($US) just to get started mentality.  I wrote my own counter proposal http://gramlich.net/projects/oceania/seastead1.html which was much smaller and incremental.  Eventually, I got an E-mail from Patri saying he thought the idea was cool and it has grown from there."
       
    • Patri's version: "Seasteading came together from many of my interests. Burning Man taught me how amazing it is to combine artistic vision and engineering practicality, but I've always been frustrated by its temporary nature.  The cohousing / intentional communities movement showed me the importance of community and the amazing things that motivated groups can accomplish, but I want to change more about society than its housing layout.  And I've always been a passionate libertarian, not content to just accept current reality and spend my life living in a political system I abhor.  I spent years trying to figure out how I could live my beliefs instead of trying to convince others of their merits, during which I came across the new country/micronation movement and its seemingly endless history of crackpots and failure. Things seemed grim until I finally found Wayne's writing: finally someone approaching this crazy field with some engineering practicality!  It turned out he only lived a couple miles away, and so we started collaborating.  With his pragmatism and sensibility as our philosophical base, and my rapid research and writing, pretty soon we had a vision I could believe in of a future worth fighting for.  It got put on the back burner for a few years while I focused on work and family, but now that we have some funding I'm thrilled to be starting on the long road to turn vision into reality."