Ocean colony mirrors Bioshock dystopia

I am still laughing at this, as it not only proves the point about the commodification/recuperation of critical impulses, in my previous "Running Man" post, but does so, again with no irony, by striving to realise the world of "Bioshock", previously posted here.

Given that "Bioshock" was an Ayn Rand inspired dystopia, it is only fitting that a relative of Milton Friedman has his bloody fingerprints all over this. The last time I remember reading about this latest link in the Chicago School dynasty, he was extolling the virtues of a "back to the future philosophy", to rationalise his involvement in assorted medieval recreation societies (high tech feudalism, how appropriate). How fatuous do you have to be to criticise democracy because it is not always "innovating", especially when it is obvious that the end results of your own preferences are actually regressive?:

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.

What is also scary is involvement of a Google developer, and the founder of PayPal. This suggests the Californian cult of the self is getting too carried away again by generalising the application of ICT metaphors taken from neoliberal economics.

I have no problem with ballardian.com possibly developing other angles on this story, in keeping with its earlier feature on "micronations". I would agree it is easy to imagine such rarefied environments becoming "zones of exception", as in "Super Cannes", where the bored, spoilt inhabitants end up killing each other for sport. But I haven't been diligent enough lately to check if this discussion is already taking place, either there, on in other forums such as in the journal "Island Studies".

For a less commodified vision of the "temporary autonomous zone", albeit saddled with its own dubious ethical associations rooted in common libertarian soil (such as pederasty), one could take a (bewildered) look at the prospective ideal of "pirate utopias":

http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakim_Bey

Finally, here is the link to the piece in Wired on the Seasteading Institute:

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/05/seasteading?currentPage=all

Bioshock

Derridata, remarkable coincidence your post on Heidegger, in light of the fact that I've been playing Bioshock a lot lately. It occurred to me that Andrew Ryan, the creator of the underwater libertarian paradise known as "Rapture", manifests many of the same tendencies, albeit shorn of Heidegger's anti-technological animus. I wonder then if we will start to see ludologists and scholars of thanatourism speaking to each other across disciplinary boundaries. And what of the possible ramifications for virtual "island studies", here referencing the new journal cited in my previous post?

Thematically, the game is distinguished by the complexity of the moral choices faced by the player. By considering these, we can avoid the simplistic analysis of Ken Wark that, "ever get the feeling that all of life is becoming like a game?" No, not really Ken. It seems more to be the case that in either environment, the player, or the tourist, is presented with moral choices, that they can choose to act on. As per the Hobbesian Leviathan, the debauched farangs foregrounded in my posts on Thailand's "zones of indistinction", Andrew Ryan pitches the appeal of his paradise in a very thin liberal conception of citizenship. I say this because liberalism in a sense must remain radically anti-utopian, in that too much of a prescriptive approach to "the good life" is seen as imperilling the freedom of the individual to come together in their own fashion and realise their desires through market interactions. Unsurprisingly then, Ryan is more interested in offering a rationale for Rapture that says more about what it is not, rather than what it is:

"I am Andrew Ryan and I'm here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of h is brow? No, says the man in Washington, it belongs to the poor. No, says the man in the Vatican, it belongs to God. No, says the man in Moscow, it belongs to everyone. I rejected those answers. I chose something different. I chose the impossible- I chose Rapture- a city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can be your city as well".

Suffice to say, things quickly go pear shaped in Rapture. Set in 1959, the game cannily anticipates the failure of Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis, witness the widesperad disenchantment and rebellion against neoliberal commodification. Rapture has degenerated into a world where mutated children roam the streets, harvesting genetic material from corpses. Assorted other mutations, some of whom are known as "Lead Heads, in what is probably an acknowledgement of the "Chicken Heads" in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", are also encountered at various points. Some espouse bizarre litanies in a desperate attempt at salvation, only to then break into random acts of violence. There are also those who have undergone grotesque mutation through gene splicing, and wear vaguely A Clockwork Orange style masks in an attempt to disguise their misshapen features.

In fact, the retro futurist architecture and character design are so exquisitely detailed, an exhaustive description remains beyond my capacity. I've chosen a few choice pics instead. Unsurprisingly, the New York Times have described Bioshock as "one of the greatest games ever made".