Miscellaneous

Internet Discussion Groups

There are a number of internet discussion groups on topics related to seasteading. Eventually, if our ideas take root, there may be seastead-specific ones. For now, here are the ones we've seen: { Chime in if you know of others }

• Floating-Cities is one of the Reality Sculptors mailing lists. It is based on Patrick Salsbury's paper Oceana: A Proposal For A New Country [Salsbury1992].
• Nation-Builders is a Yahoo group described as "Dedicated to those seeking to establish new, free nations not tied to existing States. All formulas considered - floating cities, leasing land from existing States, artificial islands and whatever participants come up with. Concentrates on financial, technical, tactical and strategic issues. Complements Libertarian-Nation list, q.v. "
• libertarianisland is a Yahoo group created in 10/2003. Its description states "Space may be the final frontier, but the ocean is the frontier that can be populated now, and for a lot less money. Living in international waters has a few distinctly libertarian advantages. No taxes. No government. No laws, but then, the really nasty people (government, bankers, lawyers, clergy and corporations) will not have an oppressive, thieving, police state government to protect them here. Since the island will be built in international waters there is no limit (other than your resources) to the size of your area. Most of the elements are dissolved in the ocean and can be mined from the brine left after the water molecules are converted to hydrogen and oxygen. "
• Transtopia is a Yahoo group devoted to the transtopia island project, which aims to create a community of transhumanists. They consider buying an island, creating one, or using ships. While the main project seems fairly defunct, there is some interesting material in the list archives, and sometimes on the list.

Environmental Impact

When properly designed, a seastead's environmental impact can be quite low. It will be up to the residents to specify their environmental polices and choose appropriate technologies. We've started writing a low-impact environmental plan for residential seasteads.

Intentional Community

For most of our existence, humans have lived in tribes or extended families. This helps make better use of scarce resources such as housing, heating, etc. Only in the past century has the first world achieved the wealth for each nuclear family to have its own dwelling, appliances, and utiltiies. While there are clearly advantages to this, some people find it unsatisfying to be so isolated. The Co-housing, or Intentional Community movement has developed in response to this. An IC is any group of people deliberately living together, which can mean anything from a college co-op to a commune.

When seasteading, especially towards the beginning, space, utilities, and appliances will be expensive. Hence seasteaders will almost certainly want to use the techniques of communal living. For example, sharing the use of energy-efficient appliances, workshops, boats, a helicopter, an internet connection, and so forth.

Communities are strongest when united by shared ideals, and it seems quite likely that early seasteads will exist largely for ideological reasons. This gives an additional reason why they will be communal in nature. Also, being isolated will increase interdependence among seasteaders. Note that communal does not necessarily mean a communist society where all property is owned jointly. It simply means that the line between what portion of property is public and private will likely be a bit farther than in normal society. People's lives and property will be more intertwined.

This does not necessarily mean loss of control, in fact there are some ways in which it can result in the opposite. One of these public sectors will be the basic infrastructure of the entire platform. In normal living, such utilities are owned by large companies, often monopolies, and it is difficult for one customer to have any control. When a small group of 100 owns the utility, individuals will have much greater say in how it is run.

As they will draw on the green movement for physical technologies, seasteads would be wise to draw on the intentional community movement for communal technologies. These people have useful experience about topics like architectural design - how to lay out common spaces. We would suggest hiring consultants like the CoHousing Company to help with such aspects [CoHoCo].

The Word Seasteading

While author Wayne Gramlich came up with this name independently, the term seasteading has been used in the US since as early as 1969. In that year it was mentioned in the Stratton report, which led to the creation of the NOAA [Stratton1969]. There was even a magazine briefly published on the topic in the 1970's [Clark2001].

Intriguingly, Seastead is also the americanization of a Swedish name. Bryan Seastead emailed us to say:

Our name Seastead, means "Homestead by the Sea" and is spelled "Sjostedt" in swedish. It is a name I think that is a couple hundred years old given by the swedish military when Swede's suddenly needed last names and my ancestors from Lake Skara, adopted Sjostedt when they went into the service. Then years later, moved to the US to spawn American born "Seastead's".