FableForge's Foundlings #13: A real life BIOSHOCK?

FableForge — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:01:56 +0000

So, not so long ago I blogged about one of the most amazing videogames ever, BIOSHOCK. I hope I said, at the time, that one of the things that made it awesome, is not so much the gameplay (we've all seen cool First Person Shooters before) or the graphics (say, Doom 3, FarCry, Crysis) but the Setting. The setting man. The story.

BIOSHOCK takes place in an underwater city named Rapture... a utopia out of the philosophies of ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand, a place where... oh fuck it, I was saving it, but here you go, I cant hold on to this any longer:

The youtube quality doesnt do justice to it. You NEED to see this on High Def... it made the small hairs on my arms stand up.

So anyway, the foundling? Oh, just this:

http://www.wired.com/science/planete...

Wired wrote:

With a $500,000 donation from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a Google
engineer and a former Sun Microsystems programmer have launched The
Seasteading Institute, an organization dedicated to creating
experimental ocean communities "with diverse social, political, and
legal systems."

You heard that right. Someone made a half million dollars downpayment to start Rapture.

Now granted, instead of the Art Deco Utopia of the game, you're looking at something more like this:

But hey! Its still its own nation! Its still its own goverment system, sovereign and whatnot. Here:

Wired wrote:

True to his libertarian leanings, Friedman looks at the situation in
market terms: the institute's modular spar platforms, he argues, would
allow for the creation of far cheaper new countries out on the
high-seas, driving innovation.

"Government is an industry with a really high barrier to entry," he
said. "You basically need to win an election or a revolution to try a
new one. That's a ridiculous barrier to entry. And it's got enormous
customer lock-in. People complain about their cellphone plans that are
like two years, but think of the effort that it takes to change your
citizenship."

Friedman estimates that it would cost a few hundred million dollars
to build a seastead for a few thousand people. With costs that low,
Friedman can see constellations of cities springing up, giving people a
variety of governmental choices. If misguided policies arose, citizens
could simply motor to a new nation.

"You can change your government without having to leave your house," he said.

You know what... Sign me up.

The first one will be built just off San Francisco bay. ... I'll keep an eye out.

Hopefully they'll have plasmids too.

seasteads

FableForge's Foundlings #13: A real life BIOSHOCK?