Listening 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/?)
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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?
@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
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