City floating on the sea could be just 3 years away
R.A. Hettinga
rah at shipwright.com
Sun Aug 2 12:26:43 PDT 2009
Well, if CNN says it, it must be true then.
Remember Patri, nothing says "we don' need no steenkin' experimental
politics" like a surface-to-surface missile...
"Whoops. It sunk. Sorry about that. Everybody okay over there? Need
any help?"
Cheers,
RAH
Remember, boys and girls, if they know who (or where...) you are, they
can take your stuff...
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>
CNN
City floating on the sea could be just 3 years away
By Shelby Erdman
CNN
(CNN) -- A floating city off the coast of San Francisco may sound like
science fiction, but it could be reality in the not-too-distant future.
The Seasteading Institute already has drawn up plans for the
construction of a homestead on the Pacific Ocean.
One project engineer described the prototype as similar to a cruise
ship, but from a distance the cities might look like oil-drilling
platforms.
According to the plans, the floating cities would not only look
different from their land-based counterparts, but they might operate
differently, too.
Patri Friedman, a former Google engineer who now works for the
Seasteading Institute, said floating cities are the perfect places to
experiment with new forms of government.
Some of the new political ideas the group is tossing around include
legalizing marijuana and making intellectual property communal -- so
that everyone would take ownership in art produced on the city at sea.
"The idea isn't just about getting away from rules or getting rid of
rules. It's about a system that encourages experimentation with
different political systems," he said.
Friedman said the floating city may be built in modular pieces so that
city blocks and neighborhoods can be recombined to create new urban
layouts.
The idea of building cities on the sea is not new, he said, but the
Seasteading Institute has come closer to realizing the goal than others.
"A lot of people over the past hundred plus years have had this idea
and even specifically building cities on the ocean to try out new
forms of government," he said. "But they've pretty much been totally
imagined and if they did try, they totally failed."
There are several unknowns about future attempts to create floating
cities, said Christian Cermelli, an engineer and architect with Marine
Innovation and Technology, based in San Francisco.
Cermelli, who is part of a team of designers creating a blueprint for
the first seastead, said it's unclear if construction is possible --
or what it would cost.
Still, a prototype for the idea may be finished in as little as three
years, he said.
Friedman said seasteads are loosely based on oil rigs, but with
important modifications.
"We care more about sunlight and open space, so the specifications are
different," he said. "Also, oil platforms are fixed in place. We think
it's important to have more modular cities. So you would build a city
out of buildings that can actually be separated and rearranged."
Cermelli said the ocean cities may use technology from suspension
bridges "to expand the space at sea and basically get a roomier
platform."
Friedman says the idea of seasteading has met a range of reactions.
"Some people think we're crazy. A lot of people think we're crazy," he
said. "Some people think terrible things could happen, others think it
would be great."
About 600 people have joined the Seasteading Institute.
Some of them, like Gayle Young, say the idea is exciting partly
because it's so different.
"I love the idea because it's audacious. It's big," she said. "It's
about pushing frontiers."
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