Seasteading

How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians

Joe Quirk, Patri Friedman

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781451699272
• eBook ISBN: 9781451699289
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

In these "thought-provoking visions of the future" ( The Wall Street Journal ), Joe Quirk and Patri Friedman of the Seasteading Institute explain how ocean cities can solve many of our environmental, technological, and civic problems, and introduce the visionaries and pioneers who are now making seasteading a reality. Our planet has been suffering from serious environmental problems and their social and political consequences. But imagine a vast new source of sustainable and renewable energy that would also bring more equitable economies. A previously untapped source of farming that could produce significant new sources of nutrition. Future societies where people could choose the communities they want to live in, free from the restrictions of conventional citizenship. This extraordinary vision of our near future as imagined in Seasteading attracted the powerful support of Silicon Valley's Peter Thiel—and it may be drawing close to reality. Facing growing environmental threats, French Polynesia has already signed on to build some of the world's first seasteads. Joe Quirk and Patri Friedman show us how cities built on floating platforms in the ocean will work, and they profile some of the visionaries who are implementing basic concepts of seasteading today. An entrepreneur's dream, these floating cities will become laboratories for innovation and creativity. Seasteading "offers hope for a future when life on land has grown grim" (Kirkus Reviews), proving the adage that yesterday's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact.

INDEX

A note about the index: The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system’s search function.

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

ABC Arkenbouw (coastal factory), 21

Abyss, The (movie), 124

abyssal plain, 124

acid rain, 82

Adams, John, 285

Adaptive Urban Development: A Symbiosis Between Cities on Land and Water in the 21st Century (de Graaf), 49, 53, 55

Aetna, 226

Africa, 230, 235–36

see also specific countries

Agency for International Development, US, 68

agriculture:

vs. aquaculture, 50

effect upon soil depletion of, 52

irrigation for, 68

reliance of coastal cities on, 47

as source of pollution, 69; see also runoff

Agriculture Department, US, 116

algae:

for biofuel, 49, 84, 94, 129–34, 135, 136

and biomass, 73, 89, 91, 134, 136

blooms of, 69, 134

and CO₂, 52, 75–76, 78, 84, 90–91

to decrease ocean acidity, 56

farming, 79–81, 112–13, 134, 158

in genetic engineering, 122

as oldest photosynthesizer, 73

in symbiosis, 49, 122–23

on trophic ladder, 111

see also aquaculture; Project Oasis; seaweed

aquaculture:

vs. agriculture, 50

and biodiversity, 77–78

and Blue Revolution, 126–27

definition of, 109

efficiency of, 47–48, 49

environmental impacts of, 104, 128

expansion of, 126

and floating cities, 50, 53

future of, 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Prologue
• I. Seavilization Now
• II. Environment
• III. Economy
• IV. Freedom
• Appendix
• Photographs
• Thank You
• About the Author
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright