StrypeyListening to an interview with folks from Data and Society on the Sunday Show, a podcast of Tech Policy Press;
https://techpolicy.press/interrogating-tech-power-and-democratic-crisis
They mention the "network state", which I'd never heard of.
(1/?)
So I did a deep drive, and found a web version of the book I presume they're referring to, giving this definition;
"A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.
#BalajiSrinivasan, 2022
https://thenetworkstate.com/the-network-state-in-one-sentence
So ... it's a distributed diplomatic entity, whose population consists entirely of landlords?
(2/?)
A bit further on, the author explains how to start your own "network state";
"Found a startup society. This is simply an online community with aspirations of something greater. Anyone can found one, just like anyone can found a company or cryptocurrency. And the founder’s legitimacy comes from whether people opt to follow them."
#BalajiSrinivasan, 2022
https://thenetworkstate.com/the-network-state-in-one-thousand-words
That's not a state of any kind, it's a cult.
(3/3)
A "network state" is basically seasteading but the territory is distributed across existing states instead of floating in international waters?
Indieterminacy@strypey Do you know this anomaly?:
> Baarle-Nassau is a municipality and town in the southern Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. It had a population of 6,899 in 2019. The town is the site of a complicated borderline between Belgium and the Netherlands: it encloses 22 small exclaves of the Belgian town Baarle-Hertog, of which the two largest contain seven counter-enclaves of Baarle-Nassau, and the main body of Belgium contains another.
@indieterminacy I do now. Wow, I bet that has a complicated history : P
@strypey Indeed. It was two nobility families over a boundary who liked to gamble parcels of land with eachother.
There was once a criminal gang who exploited the anomaly and had a property with two countries inside it. Fed up with them retreating to the other country (like the garden) to evade raids the police from both sides did a coordinated charge from both sides.
Im sure there was an interesting celebration after apprehending those shits :)
@strypey
Thinking back, Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net is perhaps around this topic with others.
Not a novel I loved, but an early one of its sort, and part of the #evolution of #SF
Thinking back, Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net is perhaps around this topic with others.
Not a novel I loved, but an early one of its sort, and part of the #evolution of #SF
@midgephoto
> Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net is perhaps around this topic with others
I'm reminded of The Star Fraction by Ken MacLeod, which takes place in a near-future UK balkanized into ideological microstates.
@strypey
I rather like that book.
Doesn't quite go on to the Cassini Division with Babbages, and The Stone Canal with gynoids, uploads, and AIs.
I rather like that book.
Doesn't quite go on to the Cassini Division with Babbages, and The Stone Canal with gynoids, uploads, and AIs.
@midgephoto I read and appreciated all three novels. But I think I enjoyed The Star Fraction the most. I'm really getting into near-future, mostly Earth-bound stories at present. You could even see that book as proto-solarpunk.
@strypey
Macleod, Stross, and the late Banks sitting in the pub might have been a good table to overhear.
I like Macleod's Engines of Light Trilogy. A lot.
#solarpunk seems to be a long way behind #cyberpunk and #steampunk and perhaps other names would do as well. I suppose #Neuromancer was long enough ago that electricity just comes out of the wall.
@midgephoto
> Neuromancer was long enough ago that electricity just comes out of the wall.
I read it about 20 years ago. It was published about 20 years before that ... *checks WP* ... in fact it had its 40th anniversary last year. That's an *old* book now.
Accelerando, the first Stross I read, reminded me of it in many ways. The main character reminded me of myself top, and given the way the story plays out, that's not something I take as a compliment 😬
@strypey
They appear in Neal Stephenson's dystopian SF novel Snow crash.
As does much else.
@midgephoto
> They appear in Neal Stephenson's dystopian SF novel Snow crash
Public service message; Like 1984 and Brave New World, Snow Crash was not written as an instruction manual!