25 Comments

PLEASE DO NOT SEND THIS TO ELON MUSK.

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That makes me incredibly sad. He taints everything he touches--kinda like a snail.

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I was wondering about the Seasteading thing recently. How many people are actually committed to it, how it's actually going ... and MOLD. Like, anyone who's lived in a humid environment knows how quickly stuff molds or rusts. If they've found a solution for that good for them but I kinda doubt it?

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I can't believe I wrote an entire article about this stuff without using the correct term. 😁 Yes! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading

A fascinating thread I just found (and wish I'd spotted before I wrote this newsletter): https://www.reddit.com/r/seasteading/comments/q8x7ii/what_are_the_biggest_challenges_when_it_comes_to/ And as you say, wet, humid environments (ie. marine) will tear things apart in no time, for all the reasons.

But finding those practical solutions must be useful for other places in the world, and the first step in building cheap, widely-available tech is building super-expensive prototypes that fall apart and explode/sink, I guess.

Getting the right people - rich people, capitalist people, scientific people looking to make a name for themselves - hooked seems to be part of the challenge as well, I guess. (It'd be nice if, you know, Lots Of Non-Wealthy People Suffering was equally motivating, but - yeah.)

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Oh, wow, that Reddit thread is a deep rabbit hole to go down! I got a little past "cheeseburger committee" and made myself stop :) I'm sure somewhere in there someone talks about the social challenges but I didn't get to it. It's what always gets me about "f-- the government, I'm going to go off and start my own freedomtown" thing is that you still run into the issue of how people manage to live together and that problem never changes no matter how far you run. (That's leaving out individualist survivalists, which I doubt most seaseaders would be anyway because it would be incredibly difficult and also boring.)

I am reminded that many things like car safety technology have come from designs for and experiments in space shuttles and stations. Innovation is inherently wasteful and costly, but its downstream benefits can be huge!

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Yeah, the social side - I think a lot of blue-sky thinking in this regard, overly obsessed with the tech (and usually male), assumes "oh, well, everyone will see that the most RATIONAL course of action is etc etc. and then they'll just do that stuff willingly, so we don't need to bother about the social rights and charters for now...". Which is a thing dystopian science fiction authors have been having fun with for a long, long time. Human beings are emotional and messy and wildly different, and the future of successful tech involves behavioural scientists aplenty.

In this regard, I wonder who would choose a seasteader's life, if it was optional and not just a mass-relocation initiative? What kind of personality? Maybe the kind of folk who love cruise ships and dream of living on one fulltime? (I am not one of them.)

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8800! Wonderful! As usual, so interesting. I hope we get creative quickly because climate change is here and we are going to need some very creative solutions.

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I hope so too. I suspect it's going to be a lot easier to use tech to prevent disasters than to use it to lessen their effects and deal with the wreckage in their wake...

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If there is one thing I have learned about infrastructure in my 74 years it is that funding is secured for a design life of 40 years, then the thing starts to break apart after 10. A patchwork repair approach is taken for the next 10 years then the whole thing is demolished at 27 years in. How does that work on a Lilypad?

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Expensively, I suspect! Thanks for this. Yes, ongoing maintenance for something that big and that complex...I guess it would require an army and be as endless as painting the Forth Road Bridge. And as you say, the longevity problem, especially of recent tech which often seems to follow a version of Moore's Law in how quickly it becomes obsolete and clapped out? All sorts of issues. I guess it would be like a living thing: replacing much of itself continually in order to keep going. Maybe a modular approach from the start, to accommodate it?

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Modular would be a good approach. A never-ending addition of another module whilst scuttling a 30-year old chunk.

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Really, whether it's underwater or Mars, it's still condemning yourself to life in a cramped cell, plus (maybe?) video games. Bon voyage, folks!

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Yup. These are not practical solutions for the lives of 95% of folk! Not almost-everyone's idea of a good life. But if water-dwelling tech is like the space programme, there'll be a lot of "oh, we can use this for THAT" knock-on effects, where innovation comes from adapting something in a way nobody had previously thought of.

For example: the heat pumps that Joe Biden has just passed measures on, which will lower greenhouse gas emissions and save households money - that particular tech started as a way to dry salt out of salt marshes back in 1856, which is - kinda barmy?

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A better example: Astronaut ice cream! 😂

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Hooray! I was not aware of this thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeze-dried_ice_cream

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A bit chalky, and sticks to the roof of your mouth, but it's a conversation starter!

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The first bite is awful on the teeth but then you can’t stop. First tried it as a kid during a tour of NASA. Or maybe it was a space thing at Disney? Still kind of love it. In theory.

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I loved the idea of underwater towns as a kid. The reason? My favourite LEGO set themed "Underwater City", I guess.

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I remember that one! Yes, same - although LEGO was always something I dreamed of having one day, rather than something I exacftly had...

My childhood underwater obsession was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_Adventure - my favourite of all the Willard Price adventure novels. They've fallen out of favour these days for being, well, massively racist in places (yikes), but the sense of wonder and discovery in the best of those books has always stayed with me.

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My mom would save up money to buy me LEGO only to find me playing with the little LEGO men, and not actually building anything. Suffice to say, I never became an engineer, but having LEGO as building blocks for little stories was just as good, I guess.

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Great newsletter! I mean Bioshock! What's not to love about that? Also, where do I make my reservation for Lilypad?

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OK but who suggested tens of thousands of people could be "displaced by rising sea levels" and have they met many scientists? How many cities are at the bottom of the seas and oceans and how close to the high water mark are we now (pretty close)

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BioShock!! How’d I miss this post?? LOL. Excellent job as always, Mike!

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