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Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel...has teamed up with the grandson of libertarian icon Milton Friedman, Patri Friedman, to try and develop a “seastead,” or a permanent and autonomous dwelling at sea. Friedman formed the “Seasteading Institute” in 2008, and Thiel has donated more than a million dollars to fund its creation...
they claim a floating city could be just years away. The real trick is finding a proper location to build this twenty-first century Atlantis. Currently, they are attempting to find a host nation that will allow the floating city somewhat close to land, for the calm waters and ability to easily travel to and from the seastead.
In recent years there have been reports of similar efforts, like the Freedom Ship, a floating city designed to house 50,000 people, with a landing strip on top of the vessel.
Such concepts raise the questions, "Can these communities create new social structures when the subconscious societal norms we all grow up with have such a powerful influence on our expectations?" and "Is the ocean really the best place to site these communities, given how powerful, treacherous, and corrosive an environment the sea is?"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2015, @02:53AM
Again, seasteads will be cheaper, more convenient, and safer than undersea habitats. Unless the relative cost gap shrinks, I don't know why anyone would choose to go undersea. The seastead offers autonomy over land settlements, an undersea habitat could offer the same but couldn't use solar, would be harder and more dangerous to travel to and from, would have the same problems of corrosion as boats, but harder to fix and maintain, would need more safety features, would need to be more self-sufficient (at a cost), and would cause claustrophobia (a big undersea habitat would be very expensive and harder to engineer). An open air park on a seastead would be a lot easier to do than the equivalent for an underwater habitat.
Face it, 3D sucks unless you lower the cost of electricity and materials to almost nothing.