We need network societies, not network states
9 comments
·February 5, 20250xbadcafebee
RajT88
You could as easily have led with:
Hey stupid, who is going to work in your factories?
And follow the premise from there.
oneplane
Another fun thing from that book is a fantasy on how things will be better because you can't revert things. It's essentially digital feudalism combined with populism. How could that possibly go wrong...
mullingitover
xkcd summed up why these ideas are dumb in two panels[1] a really long time ago. Just replace 'encrypted laptop' with 'the private key that controls your whole life.'
29athrowaway
The main flaw of The Network State is the concept of reverse diaspora.
The idea that multiple people with no shared background will magically come together and collaborate to the extent that they can form an scalable movement that results in a meatspace state that is one cohesive collaborative unit.
Whenever a group of people pool their effort and resources together, another group of opportunistic people will try to take advantage.
The more resources and effort are pooled together, and the more power is accrued, the higher the incentive for competitors to arise, both internal and external.
And this flaw is the aspect shared with most utopian theories that expect everyone to collaborate do not account for simple game theory. Give enough incentives and the doves turn into hawks.
throw0101a
On network states, see perhaps "The bro-ligarchs have a vision for the new Trump term":
> All of these men see themselves as the heroes or protagonists in their own sci-fi saga. And a key part of being a “technological superman” — or ubermensch, as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would say — is that you’re above the law. Common-sense morality doesn’t apply to you because you’re a superior being on a superior mission. Thiel, it should be noted, is a big Nietzsche fan, though his is an extremely selective reading of the philosopher’s work.
> The ubermensch ideology helps explain the broligarchs’ disturbing gender politics. “The ‘bro’ part of broligarch is not incidental to this — it’s built on this idea that not only are these guys superior, they are superior because they’re guys,” Harrington said.
[…]
> The so-called network state is “a fancy name for tech authoritarianism,” journalist Gil Duran, who has spent the past year reporting on these building projects, told me. “The idea is to build power over the long term by controlling money, politics, technology, and land.”
* https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/395646/trump-inauguration...
> His book, The Network State (TNS), puts forth a new social contract enabled by “Web3 technology,” centered on blockchains
I love articles that give me a magic sentence right at the front that tells me I don't need to read any more