[Imc-makerspace] SeaSteading Institute

[Stewart Dickson]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/silicon-valley-billionaire-funding-creation-artificial-libertarian-islands-140840896.html
Silicon Valley billionaire [Pay Pal founder and early Facebook investor 
Peter Thiel] funding creation of artificial libertarian islands | The 
Lookout - Yahoo! News -- It's about the SeaSteading Institute 
http://www.seasteading.org

Should we be happy ...  or afraid?  The world is running out of natural 
private islands, so this is another venue for "offshore" nefarious 
dealings outside-the-law.  I am visualizing compounds out of
James Bond 007 swarming with commandos with automatic weapons.

I have often thought that the Internet would be the prototype community 
which would in turn influence change in the real world.   I suppose that 
SeaSteads are a further interim step, like WikiLeaks and BitCoin.

Or will SeaSteads become more like the "Raft" from Neal Stephenson's 
"Snow Crash"?  Populated by boat people who drifted out of the Yangtse 
and Mekong rivers.  Just what is the real world?

Here's another article I like about Peter Thiel:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/
R. Buckminster Fuller was fired from Southern Illinois 
University-Carbondale for, in addition to generally pissing people off, 
he once
got up in front of a room full of people and said, [In effect] "If you 
have a Ph.D leave now, because you're all full of shit."  (As related to 
me by Alan Schoen, who took the job at SIU after Bucky left.)