Blackmoor Vituperative

This chic, tree-lined California town might seem an unlikely place to begin the colonization of Earth’s oceans. Palo Alto is known for expensive modernism, Stanford University, al fresco dining, and land prices so high a modest cottage still sells for well over $1 million.

If Patri Friedman gets his way, the area will also be remembered for birthing a political movement called seasteading. The concept is as simple to explain as it will be difficult to achieve: erecting permanent dwellings on the high seas outside the territorial waters claimed by the world’s governments.

“Innovation in society and serving marginalized groups has always happened on the frontier,” Friedman said in an interview last week. “We don’t have a frontier anymore. The reason our political system doesn’t innovate anymore is that there’s no place to try out new things. We want to provide that place.”

(from The next frontier: ‘Seasteading’ the oceans, CNet

Whether you are interested in the politics of a new sovereign nation, or the technology behind what might make it possible, this is interesting reading.