"The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country; and for this reason I have focused my efforts on new technologies that may create a new space for freedom."
"The future of technology is not pre-determined, and we must resist the temptation of technological utopianism — the notion that technology has a momentum or will of its own, that it will guarantee a more free future, and therefore that we can ignore the terrible arc of the political in our world. A better metaphor is that we are in a deadly race between politics and technology. The future will be much better or much worse, but the question of the future remains very open indeed. We do not know exactly how close this race is, but I suspect that it may be very close, even down to the wire. Unlike the world of politics, in the world of technology the choices of individuals may still be paramount. The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism".
Peter Thiel
from The Seasteading Institute Annual Report 2008
1 comment:
Derridata, thanks for this, I am still laughing. It's the crazy paradox of yuppies thinking they're great individualists, when in fact they are just creating "serial" effects in the culture at large. Moving the communities to the oceans would not change this, as the same service class would be required to keep such degenerate utopias functioning on a day to day basis. No unions of course, or capital will take flight somewhere else.
I chuckled too at this video, particularly its accurate satire of the seriality via references to the "Starbucks effect":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T1RMuoQnKo&feature=player_embedded
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