Curioso.
Nel mio TedTalk a ottobre scorso su "Distopia o Utopia: l’Intelligenza
Artificiale nel 2050”, introdussi il concetto di Utopia Virtuale, ossia di
gruppi di persone che si costituiscono in comunità rette dalle proprie regole,
ispirate a principi condivisi dalla comunità.
Le Utopie Virtuali dovrebbero superare gli stati nazionali e costituire un
contraltare alle grandi aziende private multinazionali, che ingabbiano le
persone all’interno dei loro walled garden, obbligandole a seguire le loro
regole, orientate a massimizzare loro interessi privati.
Ho elaborato l'idea in questo articolo:
https://personal.onlyoffice.com/products/files/doceditor?fileid=drive-63308-%7c1XF2Oe9Sziz6l8kly5sq3MsHI5_OAInfg&doc=YkF4WGRYY0VuUHVqdUlvM21Hc1JlTjlPVVczV0QvQWFuRVRGMTBKS2tlUT0_ImRyaXZlLTYzMzA4LXwxWEYyT2U5U3ppejZsOGtseTVzcTNNc0hJNV9PQUluZmci
ho
Stavo aspettando qualcuno che mi aiutasse ad articolare questa visione e a
farla circolare, e mi auguro che sia Srinivasan a riuscirci.
In realtà avrei preferito che la visione nascesse dal b asso, da una
elaborazione condivisa, comunque un libro può essere un buon punto di partenza.
— Beppe
> On 5 Jul 2022, at 15:46, [email protected] wrote:
>
> From: Alberto Cammozzo <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
> To: Nexa <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
> Subject: [nexa] Could new countries be founded – on the internet? |
> Sam Venis
> Message-ID: <[email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> <https://es.sonicurlprotection-fra.com/click?PV=2&MSGID=202207051346200259984&URLID=9&ESV=10.0.17.7319&IV=3882C14053852A03893CADE76004619B&TT=1657028781835&ESN=c9uHQ2RKOD2Ov6nxC9PixG0pkgJqaYJNyx7vhNlPC5Y%3D&KV=1536961729280&B64_ENCODED_URL=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlZ3VhcmRpYW4uY29tL2NvbW1lbnRpc2ZyZWUvMjAyMi9qdWwvMDUvY291bGQtbmV3LWNvdW50cmllcy1iZS1mb3VuZGVkLW9uLXRoZS1pbnRlcm5ldA&HK=0D093797125AF26AD66EA9C23A9C7E2B4DCF3CC8A678DE217B94AEB2A07243CA
>
> <https://es.sonicurlprotection-fra.com/click?PV=2&MSGID=202207051346200259984&URLID=9&ESV=10.0.17.7319&IV=3882C14053852A03893CADE76004619B&TT=1657028781835&ESN=c9uHQ2RKOD2Ov6nxC9PixG0pkgJqaYJNyx7vhNlPC5Y%3D&KV=1536961729280&B64_ENCODED_URL=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlZ3VhcmRpYW4uY29tL2NvbW1lbnRpc2ZyZWUvMjAyMi9qdWwvMDUvY291bGQtbmV3LWNvdW50cmllcy1iZS1mb3VuZGVkLW9uLXRoZS1pbnRlcm5ldA&HK=0D093797125AF26AD66EA9C23A9C7E2B4DCF3CC8A678DE217B94AEB2A07243CA>>
>
> In The Network State, a buzzy new book by Balaji Srinivasan, the former chief
> technology officer of Coinbase, poses a devious question: how do you Larp a
> country into existence?
>
> Released provocatively this 4 July, the book presents Srinivasan’s case for a
> new model of digital statehood run and managed in the cloud. A network state,
> as he describes it, is basically a group of people who get together on the
> internet and decide that they’re going to start a country. With a social
> network to connect them, a leader to unite them, and a cryptocurrency to
> protect their assets, Srinivasan says a country can be born with laws, social
> services and all. A network state is a country that “anyone can start from
> your computer, beginning by building a following” – not unlike companies,
> cryptocurrencies, or decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). In a
> world where billionaires can run companies larger than countries, Srinivasan
> asks, could such a state achieve recognition from the United Nations?
>
> Like all utopian visions, this one, too, is diagnostic – an answer to a
> growing list of “wicked” social problems like surveillance capitalism,
> economic stagnation, political polarization, and conflict among great powers.
> Just when we need leaders to solve our problems, Balaji argues, they are
> failing, and the reason isn’t just corruption or incompetence – the reason is
> technological. Central government is simply no longer capable of addressing
> our needs because the world for which it was designed has changed.
>
> The internet, for example, has made place less important, so national borders
> seem increasingly arbitrary. And cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have proven
> that if enough people believe in the value of an idea you can create
> something worth trillions of dollars. Software has made it so that a few
> engineers can outcompete nations (think hacker groups and startups). And, in
> the age of social networks, millions of anonymous people can fit into groups
> that act and coordinate together; just look at r/wallstreetbets and Gamestop.
>
> “Very few institutions that predated the internet will survive the internet,”
> Srinivasan said recently, in a lecture describing the book. So the solution,
> he argues, is to build an institution based on it. Here’s how it would work:
> a person on Twitter decides to start a country so they float the idea to
> their pals and begin to gather recruits. They put together a vision statement
> and a list of values, and soon enough people begin to join and tell their
> friends. It starts off like a social network.
>
> By pooling their money and lending their skills, the community begins to
> develop social services and spawn its own mini-culture, providing things like
> healthcare and insurance and passports and dope parties. With something like
> a hybrid of Twitter and Discord, they could connect, share ideas, and vote
> (think up- and down-voting on your favorite legislation). And with a currency
> like bitcoin, they could control their own money supply and protect their
> funds from encroaching governments. First they would buy small plots of land,
> like a national Soho house, and eventually, they would begin to migrate into
> chosen cities – probably to sympathetic jurisdictions like Miami, which,
> Srinivasan says, will compete to acquire these brave new digital citizens.
>
> To make it happen, no wars need to be fought and no laws need to be violated.
> With rockstar leaders to blaze their path and negotiate on the international
> stage, these new states would slowly but surely obtain rights and
> recognition, eventually breaking off from their home countries once and for
> all. When it works, Srinivasan writes, “it will eventually become a template
> … the modern version of Jefferson’s natural aristocracy.” First, there was
> Brexit; then other movements like Wexit; now, a few years later, there’s a
> new romantic vision of escape for techies – “Texit”?
>
> When The Network State drops this week it is likely to solicit a number of
> heated reactions. Some, grumbling about rightwing Silicon Valley figures like
> Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin, will call the ideas of The Network State
> fascist and tyrannical, and others, likely those on the libertarian right,
> will call it visionary and scholarly. Srinivasan, you might hear from them,
> is a soothsayer – a truth-teller. But beneath the posturing there will be a
> lingering question: is any of this actually possible?
>
> While the concept might bend our idea of nationality, the fact remains that a
> lot of precursors already exist. Consider Dudeism, a religion based on a
> character from the Coen Brothers’ 1998 film, with a reported population of
> 450,000 Dudeist priests. Or even, as Srinivasan points out, the state of
> Israel, which brought together a people scattered around the world and
> organized them around a common ideal. Many countries, Srinivasan says, that
> are recognized by the UN have populations around five to 10 million people
> with economies much smaller than what an equal size of tech workers might
> produce. That a bunch of crypto bros might test their fate on an eccentric
> leader doesn’t seem too far-fetched. Plus, the tech already exists.
>
> And with over 650,000 Twitter followers – an army of young, tech-savvy and
> politically credulous acolytes – Srinivasan might just be the man to do it.
> There’s an expression that circulates on Twitter about him every so often:
> that “Balaji was right” is the most terrifying phrase in the English
> language. Among the crypto-rich and the billionaire class this book will be
> positioned as a north star, levied to support the long-running claim that
> technologists can run society better than the bureaucrats. And now, with this
> book, Srinivasan has given them the framework to prove it.
>
> What doesn’t fit so neatly into Srinivasan’s vision are little things like
> death and ageing and sickness. How will poverty be dealt with in a network
> state? “The future,” he wrote in 2015, “is nationalists vs technologists. A
> full-throated, jealous defender of borders, language, and culture. Or a
> rootless cosmopolitan with a laptop, bent on callow disruption.” It’s
> romantic, sure, but one could ask: what about people that just want a stable
> job?
>
> Of course, Srinivasan isn’t the first technologist to offer a tarot reading
> of our tech-mediated future. In 2019, the theorist Aaron Bastani wrote
> another popular formulation, this one from the left, explaining how robots
> will make us all rich. His book Fully Automated Luxury Communism starts with
> the same general diagnoses: that we’re going into the third industrial
> revolution, that we’re at an epochal moment of human history, that technology
> has rendered our systems obsolete. But his conclusion, as the title suggests,
> is that we need more centralization, not less. Let the robots do our work,
> the book argues, and let us enjoy the spoils. Hunger, disease, energy crises,
> jobs – these will all be relics of a scarce and squalid past that came before
> the age of abundance. The future is the nanny state, Bastani suggests – only
> better.
>
> What these visions point to is a growing cleavage among the strange cohort of
> people who call themselves futurists. On the one hand, there are those who
> imagine a world of centralization, marked by super-blocs and mass
> redistribution of wealth. And on the other, there are those who claim that
> the world already mirrors the feudal systems of yore. In this sort of vision,
> like the one offered by Balaji Srinivasan, fragmentation is on the docket and
> rugged individualism is the outstanding moral code. And this book, or better
> yet, this playbook, is just the first attempt to make it official.
_______________________________________________
nexa mailing list
[email protected]
https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
