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Bringing Sci-Fi to Life: Future State Congress on The DeSci Mic 🎙️
Recorded: Aug. 21, 2024 Duration: 1:04:33Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Hey everyone, thanks for joining us.
We're starting a couple minutes late due to some technical issues.
Let's just give another moment for any other guests to filter in.
Are we expecting 40 foxes?
I guess I'm here.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay, cool.
So, yeah, I mean, I guess we may as well kind of get started.
I mean, a lot of folks catch the show as a recorded format.
So, again, apologies for the late start.
So I'll open it up.
Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Desai Mike.
This week, as usual, I'm joined by CryptoShrimpPhD, who's behind the Desai Mike account.
Erin McGinnis is away this week.
We're looking forward to her return to the show very soon.
So very excited by our guest this week.
We've got the folks behind Future State, which is a self-publishing platform that's sort
of built around and promoting the whole network state movement, which is, in addition to DSI
and some other interests in crypto, blockchain, et cetera, I think certainly, you know, network state is, is among my sort of top, um, you know, sort of, uh, interesting, uh, sort of developments, uh, that, that I'm,
I'm watching, um, you know, used to roll, you know, back in my Lisbon days, used to roll
with the sort of the network state, uh, group out there. Um, but, um, you know, look, I,
you know, I've been, I've been sort of traveling last a little bit, looking forward to learning about, you know, what's new in network states.
So, yeah, with that said, you know, also this week, you know, from the future state, is it fair to say, call it a movement or a platform?
We're also joined by Ray Sfitlia and 40 Foxes, who's, I guess, behind the Future State account.
So welcome, guys.
Maybe just off the top, you know, for maybe some of the listeners that will be, you know,
tuning into the show that maybe aren't familiar with the whole network state movement and with Future State,
do you mind just giving us, you know, a 40,000-foot overview?
Yeah, sure.
Ray, do you want to start?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, I can start.
Thank you, thank you for inviting us.
And, yeah, really great to be here.
And about all this whole network state stuff,
it's where it became real personal for me.
Because I'm originally from Belarus
and I was pushed out of the country
because we have dictatorship in our country
and we're trying to build a new state outside of the country.
Basically, it's half a million, at least, Belarusians in Europe right now.
We have parliament in exile, we have president in exile.
And for me, it's more personal stuff to make how to rebuild a country
even without borders, where we can't go back to it.
And then I just catch up by Balaji's book, The Network State.
And it became like a puzzle for me, for understanding, oh, it's impossible.
So why not to make this?
And that is how I was involved in all this network state stuff.
And how I started to dive deep in all previous iteration from sovereign individuals,
the youth in previous iteration from sovereign individuals, digital democracy and all the
buzzwords that we have on this bubble. But basically what Future State is making is
we're trying to imagine the future and how it should work like, mostly focusing on governments
and because it's one of the leverage that can make our life much
more easier or much more interesting.
And that is how I met with David and who is right now on Future State R account and he's
really incredible in all this and that is why we team up and make a couple of events
in London, Lisbon, Berlin.
And right now we are making this Future State Congress on Cyprus.
And Future State TV right now is focusing on just acquiring more information about this topic and promoting it to a broader audience.
And I believe David will talk more about him and our approach of making this happen with
hard-sized fiction.
So, yeah, thank you.
And let's give the mic to David.
Thanks, Ray.
So I've known Ray about two years now and prior to that just before the pandemic I was working
in a de-sized startup in Belarus so it was that time it was called blockchain
for science and I met up with the kind of original Berlin crew and the best programming team and project that I moved.
So originally I was an immunologist and medical doctor
and was interested in doing scientific research.
But then I got more and more drawn into the application of computers to that.
And I got brought back to science with through the blockchain for science the science
movement I'd be joined the Ethereum project in 2014 and was been long-standing interested in
in governance issues so you know I started something along with a couple of other people
called liquid democracy and I was interested in using the Ethereum originally the Bitcoin I started something along with a couple of other people called Liquid Democracy,
and I was interested in using the Ethereum, originally the Bitcoin blockchain,
and then when Ethereum white paper came out, interested in using Ethereum for Liquid Democracy.
So I've got a longstanding interest in both.
And in fact, with regard to science and decentralized science, my interest in that was with regard to reforming the publishing process, reforming peer review. 1990 I was working on a voting mechanism to basically allocate reputation to
wiki pages multimedia wiki pages in this decentralized teaching platform
student note-taking system that I developed at Sharon Cross Hospital here in London.
And the medical professors would come because I had an R&D department.
I was initially offered a sabbatical year from the dean
to work on this project,
and then it became its own interdisciplinary department
at the teaching hospital there.
But the main critique and feedback that I got from professors was,
this has been authored by students.
It was a collaborative student note-taking system,
and it had a medical dictionary in there, and it had a patient history section.
And they were saying, how do we know whether it's good quality?
So I started to look into the peer review process and various forms of social editorial and I worked out community
currency for this project to incentivize the contributions and a reputation
system for the scientists publishing in that system and so yeah my coming
together here on the Future State Project,
working with Array, was really also obviously that whole project got destroyed,
if you'd like, first of all, with the political situation in Belarus,
with the kind of white revolution,
and everyone that I knew in Belarus was out on the streets supporting the opposition movement.
And then with that clampdown followed by the pandemic and then later obviously the Ukraine
war, the whole community of startup scene, decentralized science scene from that Eastern European area got scattered across Europe.
And so that's when I started to work with much more on the governance side and particularly on
the legal tech side. So the aspect of the decentralized science project that I was
focusing on Belarus was really around decentralized IP, IP new forms of
intellectual property and new forms of incentivization and for deep science and
long-term science investing of private and public funding and that whole governance aspect really really can be applied to any kind of governance, large-scale governance community,
whether it's specifically a community of interest, which is basically the science community,
or whether it be a city, or whether it be local governance, or whether it be a diaspora,
like the Belarusian diaspora or the Ukrainian diaspora.
And in all these situations,
you need to innovate in the kind of fintech financial incentivization sector,
look at new ways of investment, new ways of reimbursing people
and to create a kind of incentivized commons there
and that balance between kind of incentivized commons there and that balance
between kind of private and and and mutual ownership or commons-based ownership comes up
again and again there and also then the actual governance in other words the the kind of
democratic or deliberative structures including the publishing, how media or news works or science publishing.
And in all these network, they're all basically network states. So for me,
the SAI is a network state of scientists working across the world. And for the Belarusian
opposition, we need to set up shadow institutions that work and function as a network state.
The United Nations requires, I mean, it should be supporting a network state for failed states
or emergency or disaster situations so that you don't get a kind of repeat of the Arab Spring
and so forth.
So it's a recurrent pattern.
How do you provide? and the future of all our
institutions on this planet are digital, you know, in terms of their legal structure, the
contractual arrangements you make, the assets, the IP, the taxation, the governance, the ownership.
These are all pretty well already, and certainly in the future, fully digital structures.
And obviously, blockchain and smart contracts, when married with robust legal status for the agreements,
as well as when they are married to, obviously, within a legal framework,
married to, obviously, within a legal framework,
you can then have an incredibly playful and imaginative space
where you can really create new governance structures at scale
that match the needs of the particular community at hand.
And, yeah, all of this sounds like science fiction to most people.
So when we were working on the de-science blockchain thing,
negotiating with, I don't know, the Wellcome Trust here in London
or with various science funders and what have you,
it was the beginning of introducing them first to blockchain
and then to de-sci.
And how that can be applied to publishing,
it takes a lot of communication, a lot of storytelling, basically.
And classically, the storytelling around anything to do with blockchain
or blockchain for science was particularly attractive
is problematic to a lot of people.
It's controversial.
And the sorts of reputation that was associated with that
causes a kind of tension between that and
unnecessary tensions between that for instance in the open science movement
and I'm really intrigued now because it's probably about
yeah two to three years since I have been more closely involved in the DSI movement, how that's progressed, what the
current blockages or tensions or opportunities are in that space.
But I think maybe talk about the particular project that we're doing, which is a methodology
really around our use of,
you know, turning science fiction into science fact.
So I don't know,
and it's actually the first time in this audio space,
this space is used to a bit more kind of discursive sort of,
you know, I don't know, question and answers.
I don't know if that's a good point to pause
or if I should describe how science fiction, how scenario planning, how backcasting and
how we're going to use that in the future state Congress and what the
relevance of that to the sciences. For sure yeah I was just I was actually
just about to get to the ask about about the um the the congress is coming up um maybe just before we
go there just real quick just you know it's funny um uh we we share like uh some some background
interestingly enough i uh when you know um back in my day i was doing a computational epidemiology
sorry yeah yeah yeah i was studying the evolution of the immune system. ties together you know the the network state movement and and you know the the d side movement
and you know really like your perspective on it um this conversation actually reminds me a lot of a
conversation i had um back in like like late last year in dubai at like a cocktail reception on the
you know top floor with like a with like a pool air were you in dub Dubai like last year? No. Okay. Anyway, it's a small world.
Perhaps I'm like over, overfitting it. It just feels like, you know, very, very familiar. So
anyway, I digress a little bit. So yeah, please, you know, tell us more about the future state
conference. When's it coming up? Who should attend? You know, where is it and and yeah definitely um we'd like to hear about
your approach of making you know uh science fiction real okay so yeah it's it's in cyprus
um it's december the 2nd to the 6th um uh and so it takes part on Monday to Friday, basically five days.
And it's a Congress rather than a conference.
So it's really, we call it like
an action-oriented unconference.
So there are workshops every day.
And it basically is about imagining what a future state is.
So on the opening day,
we're working and introducing
this interdisciplinary working practice,
this science fiction aspect.
And we're working with a particular science fiction narrative
because of the connections that we have. I've worked quite a bit in film science fiction narrative because of the connections that we have. I worked quite a bit in film,
science fiction, creative industries space, and I knew very briefly, but my partner on that,
Robbie Stamp, is the kind of co-founder and best friend of Douglas Adams from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
So on the opening day, we're introducing that, talking about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Future.
And we're looking at introducing this interplay between how we can basically become more conscious of
and design rationally and scientifically the future of the society and
the planet we live in. And the second day we're talking about, so the second day is themed on
governance, it's the re-govern day, how we re-govern the planet, how we re-govern our institutions. That's all about, you know, new forms of, you know, voting,
deliberation and decision-making and governance that we can introduce into our future digital
institutions. The third day is about rebuilding. Here we're going to be focusing on regenerative cities, pop-up cities, the finance and the planning and the kind of
digital institutions that can actually change, make, invest in real things in the world,
if you like, make a change in the physical world. So not in virtual space solely at least,
but really about rebuilding and changing things in the physical
world. And on the third day, that's the reinvention. That is really how the scientific method,
how knowledge, how truth, how decentralized science can interface with these decision-making
institutions, whether they're the democratic or the governance or whether they're the startup investment rebuilding institutions. It's how can we structure, if you like, scientific
knowledge and the scientific method in new ways in the future state. And the final day is the
Congress itself, which is basically a game where we synthesize all those elements and we vote on the Constitution.
And that's basically the format of the day. We've got, maybe Ray can speak more to the
location itself in Cyprus, why Cyprus, the hacker villages that we've got there and
the invitation to participation. The only other thing I would say is it's a hybrid event so
we're also encouraging and we see it as a first in a series of these events, it's
in fact the third in a series for us but it's the first one where we've booked
kind of you know a sci-fi flashy venue and we're also encouraging pop-up
embassies where you also have face-to-face local deliberations
and we're enabling the kind of peer-to-peer discussion between those hybrid or online
deliberations and the participants in the Congress itself.
So maybe, Ray, you want to say a little bit about why Cyprus and
anything else you might say in terms of you know the website venue and the sorts of people and
speakers that are coming. Yeah definitely, definitely. So we already created three of these events in London, Lisbon and Berlin, as I said previously. And it became obvious for about and we decided to make it more huge and created it in a more interesting way.
And that is where Kiriakos came up. He is here right now. basically Cyprus became one of the most forward-thinking location for all these
ideas of network states, of legal structure, of how created this new ways
of licensing and IPs for all this network state, what we were talking about. And it became really interesting to speak
with Kirakos and he was also was keen to make something big like Pop-up City and we just
team up for that. And about the location, we choose it because it's sci-fi. If you can go to congress.futurestate.tv, you can find this
IANAPA Marina. And this location looks like a spaceship where you can bring
everybody on board and go to spaces and other dimensions. So we choose this location because it's amazing.
And we also choose this because it's quite easy to get from different parts of the world
and Cyprus is quite natural for this. And we also will have not just this venue, but people who live in, who want to, on four-star hotels.
For us, we will have also Hacker views, and so we convince people to go on one of four of
Hacker views. The first one about code, second one is about culture, third one about science,
about science for sure and that is why it's also interesting so people can not just go to event and
networking but it's more about managing the future and became to make this setup to think about
it more in an interesting way so we are really interested in different partners and we're talking
way. So we are really interested in different partners and we're talking with...
Because right now the science is mostly by crypto and yeah a lot of people hear from
this crypto and that is amazing. I also have a huge crypto background but it's really...
There are too many people already making something in other directions and it's better to make
this more diverse and more plural in this way.
And that is why we're teaming up with people like, yeah, from real sci-fi films like Robby
Stamp and Hitchfiker Guy.
That is why we're talking about previous interesting ways of a pirate party.
And that is why we're talking about not just crypto.
That is why we're trying to convince more women to come to our event.
Because we need a more diverse audience for this, from different nations, from different backgrounds,
more diverse audience for this from different nations from different
backgrounds to make this a future more bright because if we will team up just
with crypto people it will be crypto future and you'd say there is no better
good it's it's just one way for doing this but we want to make it more diverse in this way. So yeah.
So as the joke goes in Hitchhiker's Guide, the answer to if the universe and everything is 42, and then the issue is what is the question? And
we're kind of taking that whole world that Douglas Adams created seriously.
And he was very interested in earth science, biological science,
and the general theoretical issues.
He was much more than just a comedian stroke science fiction writer.
And the answer being 42 is basically the intriguing part of that for me from this governance perspective is that's pretty well the smallest statistical size that a valid citizen assembly makes sense.
Any smaller than that, you just don't have a sufficient deliberative chamber or sample.
chamber or sample. So the way to make a lot of decisions, knowledge-based decisions, where
you want to tap into a diversity of perspectives from a particular DEMOS is to pop up these
micro assemblies. And so that's what we will be doing at the Congress. That's one of the
core messages and methodologies that we'll be using and the other is this
hard science fiction methodology so maybe I should make a segue to what the hell hard science fiction
is and why it's really really interesting from a science point of view from a science communication
point of view and much much more importantly from a social political governance point of view, from a science communication point of view, and much, much more importantly, from a social, political governance point of view.
Or maybe we've got more questions to ask about the Congress specifically?
Well, you know, maybe I think you sort of alluded to it before, right?
But I mean, I guess, you know, thinking like big picture, you know, blue sky, like in your wildest dreams, like what do you, you know, what do you aspire to, you know, for this Congress to sort of like achieve, you know, like moonshot goal?
Personally, what drives me is fixing governance problems on this planet.
We have all this knowledge.
Obviously, knowledge is infinite and we'll get better and better at it.
We don't have a lack of resources, talent, knowledge. knowledge we just have as you know famously E.O. Wilson said you know paleolithic instincts
medieval structures and through science near god likes technology and that's a dangerous
combination in other words the one thing that we really really suffer from and that we can affect
most easily we can't put the knowledge and we don't want to put the knowledge back in,
the genie back in the box.
We can't change very easily and rapidly
our basic genetic paleolithic makeup,
but our medieval institutions
is something that we can innovate on.
And the amount of innovation
in terms of legal innovation,
property, intellectual property,
governance, democratic, decision making. We're still stuck with structures that, you know, as that famous philosopher
Joe Rogan said, you know, was drafted with a feather 200 years ago or more. So, you know,
definitely pre-Facebook, you know,
and that's old enough as it goes.
So what we can now do in the age of AI in ubiquitous,
almost ubiquitous smart phone penetration and so forth,
in terms of redesigning all our institutions from universities
universities to companies to cities to nation states is the real innovation space that is
to companies to cities to nation states,
possible now and is also severely needed whether we want to address the lack of scientific innovation
and increased change of progress there climate change whether we want to address issues of conflict resolution, peace,
all these things are questions of our governance,
and our future governance are digital institutions.
And I would like to see that completely transformed.
I'd like to see 4.2 billion people on this planet entering into a much, much more advanced deliberative governance platform that replaces our conception of nation states, United Nations, and how we move, travel, live and decide together as a species on this planet.
decide together as a species on this planet and that storytelling around that that getting the
participation of people getting people to sign on to these new digital identities that are now
possible getting them to understand the importance of self-sovereign identity um reforming the way
that we share knowledge the way that we incentivize the powerful, the wealthy, the underprivileged
on this earth, until we address those issues, we're just going to repeat the same shit that
we've been doing the last few hundred years. And so I'm excited about that possibility.
And we now have a great deal of the code base that we need
technically we're still quite a way behind in terms of that integration with
the legal in structures that marry with that but most importantly we now have a
younger generation of people moving into the situations of governance and power
around the world,
whether that be in finance, whether that be in law, whether that be in science,
whether that be in government, that understand at a much greater depth what's
possible to do with cryptography, with computers, what's possible to do with
blockchain, what's possible to do with technology, and how we can use that to reframe and reorganize our institutions.
And I think the best way that we can start with that is by really engaging as many people
as we can into imagining that future, and then demonstrating in a practical, concrete
way how we can use these tools to realize that, even if it's just in the case of a movie or a way in
which we can do workshops at conferences and reimagine how we do innovation, how
we can implant these innovation infrastructures in existing universities, incubators, and institutions
around the world, and how we can actually start to make a real difference on the ground,
using and proving to people, because there are no real examples at the moment of the use
of any alternative form of organisations, which has a good rep, basically.
I mean, people consider, you know, the structures we have as the best that we could possibly do
and anything else that changes historically has proven to be a disaster.
So we need to show it working in the real world in a way in which we can organize, produce and make things more efficiently
than traditional institutions can do.
Yeah, yeah.
Ray, do you have anything more to riff on there?
It was a great day.
I'm agreed and I just can add a little bit my personal interest in this as I
say I have interest in yeah because I'm Belarusian and these little nations like Belarus often became
like leapfrog in some stuff and governments became one of the stuff where little nations became more advanced
in huge corporate democracies, if we can talk like this.
And that is why I'm also interested to connect with all these people to show up what these
little nations like Borussians are doing right now.
So basically three months ago we had an election on blockchain with Zora Knowledge Proof
and it was created and approved by French government, for example.
And it became one of the first of this kind.
And that is why we're interested in connection and making this table more broad and advanced in this way.
And that is why also I'm interested to make this connection from different worlds and different
dimensions from a national perspective, from science perspective, from a storytelling perspective, perspective how to imagine and make this future done and not just to make it a proof for our
future and make it faster for this corporate democracy i want to double down on that as well
i mean in in my journeys in sort of technology and governance space, I mean, I left London because there was no expertise, no reception and no interest in most of the energy coming from at that
time the kind of Berlin European scene and as far as cryptography the
mathematics behind it and then later blockchain the Eastern European countries
were by far and away the most advanced, the most motivated and the most interested in that space.
And really, the whole of, I would say, blockchain innovation came from Eastern Europe.
And sure, it had to go to Canada, America, other European places to meet up with kind
of the innovation infrastructure
in order to take it forwards and to invest in it and so forth.
But the thinking and the development came from Eastern Europe,
and that was completely clear and still is to a large extent, I would say.
And the other thing is, if you're critical, which I certainly am,
of what happened, but you could see it happening.
You knew it was going to happen in terms of blockchain space.
It's that, you know, there's no, it's a technology looking for a solution.
There's no real demand.
There's no real use for it.
And I've spent most of my time looking for where a real pressing community need is,
where the demand is and where the understanding of the potential of that technology
is. And there is no doubt in my mind that in the last, let's say, in the last three, four,
five years, the diaspora from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine being some of the most digitally savvy,
blockchain savvy communities on the planet, who absolutely no longer have a country
a state or any ability to have a passport to travel to set up bank accounts need to relocate
their businesses trade with each other cooperate interface with the european union and other
agencies let alone the 150 billion that needs to be reinvested in Ukraine to rebuild the country post some sort of peaceful settlement and avoiding the corruption in that, there is an incredible audience, demand and need for network state services in that community. And that's very, very different from even in science where there is a kind of
need, but you have so many and a deeper understanding of the potential and the reform,
super smart people. But there are such well-established funding mechanisms and institutions.
It's kind of still a fringe area where, you know, a lot of people will say, well, why can't we just
use the existing institutions we have here?
I mean, yeah, I can see the point, sort of,
but I'd rather get a good professorship at this institution or what have you.
There isn't the same pressing demand from a community
to want to apply that here and now for their present situation
and in a more dreamy, utopian, ambitious way for the future state,
the future governance of the countries that they've come from.
Yeah, I mean, so it sounds like you kind of maybe already answered my question, but I'll kind of ask it anyway, right? You know, I mean, in terms of where you see network state, like the principles of network state, which you, you know, elaborated on just a moment ago, what type of environment do you see those taking hold in, you know, first, right? Whether it's sort of like the, I don't know, I don't know how to call it, you know,
corners of edges of the earth, like, you know, Libra land and, and, and sea land,
these sort of, you know, administratively nebulous zones,
or whether it's free economic zones that are, you know,
being created by countries like, you countries like Honduras and others,
or whether it's new frontiers like seasteading, perhaps outer space,
or whether it's, you know, I mean, you mentioned diaspora a few times now,
so I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm curious about your perspectives on that.
your mouth but i'm curious about your perspectives on that um i think my perspective is quite a quite
quite aligned with uh all the talks from boji and uh uh other people from from the space uh
this could be already kind of network stage right now because uh we're talking about the
neighbors and diaspora we have as I said half a million
Belarusians abroad we have our own app that where we can find out other Belarusians as our
culture event our businesses and we can make it just on phone already right now and we don't need
a physical location and be lived in powers right now and
all these people are connected from not just like economic perspectives they don't have nfts or
tokens or something they're interested in something more deep in that way and because we have all this
experience of relocating and be separate from our own country.
And we just seeking our new home and trying to find out it.
And we trying to team up with people who, with whom we have already like a very shared background.
That is why we try to make this new services to make it real.
That is why we had these elections. That is why our president in exile
are going to meetings with all these presidents, prime ministers from other countries, because
we have problems and she tried to solve this problem. It's not easy because she's president in exile and it's kind of difficult to make this happen.
They have very ground problems, for example, I can't change my passport and it's interesting in
also sci-fi ways that I only can apply to alien passports now. And because the Belarusian president
just make a law that I can make it outside of the country.
And it go inside of the country.
But if I go to Belarus, I will go to jail just straight.
And because, yeah, promoted one candidate to the president back in 2020.
And it's not welcome to in our country to
become a promoter of democracy and a candidate. That is why we're trying to
find this new home online mostly. Most of our population right now live in
Warsaw and Vilnius just because it's much much easier to come up and with culture and all the stuff.
But I'm for example living in Lisbon right now and we also have this Borussia community here
and it's also quite close to each other and it's obviously that I have more connections and
this background from childhood with these people.
That's why it became obvious that team up and making something with these people is sometimes much easier for me.
And trying to make my connections more advanced in the world.
But yeah, and it's just easier.
But yeah, it's just easier.
From my perspective, I see it as a special economic zone where we can already have all this online.
We just need to set up a legal structure for our forum where we can make basic things like opening company.
Because my previous company was based in Estonia and Estonia just said oh sorry you have boris and
passports and so your e-residence card so you can't make your new company you can't operate
your old company so it became quite not easy for me that is why just grounding things like
opening company or making a passport or cargo document, it's became necessary for
me right now. And it's became necessary for at least half a million persons like me. That
is why establishing this special economic zone and set up just basic things, it's already
a huge thing for us. It's how past to make this happen and I believe
it will be really great stuff because we don't know how long this war will go on we don't know
how long all this will go in our country unfortunately because I have parents, I have relatives in Belarus right now, and I'm scared what's going on in it.
Because basically it became a North Korea right now. We have so many political prisoners, just more and in Russia 120 million population. So it's a much more
higher scale for what's going on inside of Belarus. This is why we need to set up and make this legal
structure outside of Belarus to help us first of all but also to help people inside of Belarus
to help us, first of all, but also to help people inside of Belarus.
Because we need to, after all this democracy stuff will end,
we need to go back and help people inside.
And we need to make this advance.
And we will have all the opportunity, and it will be a good way to this and a good time to make
this change. And it's something that we really need and that people inside will really be
helpful for. And that is why it will be obviously for me that it can be easier than changing huge countries with all these issues.
We can start from scratch.
And it's this way that became an easier way to create this network state.
Yeah, we have this vision right now with a network state for high-wealth individuals
and entrepreneurs, but I believe
that community, little communities like our are something that's really needed for this
and it's easy to make this happen.
This is why also change perspective of a global audience to these little communities that need this.
It's one of the goals of this Congress, just to make projection and say,
oh, it was there where we can make it happen, where this garden can grow up.
Not just because one guy with a very lot of money wants this.
No, because these millions of people need this and that is I believe quite, quite personal for me. And yeah, I can't emphasize
enough how various diaspora can really benefit from this network state
can really benefit from this network state concept,
particularly when they're also looking forward to,
at some time in the near future or more distant future,
take these digital institutions and apply them
to ownership and governance of actual land, right?
So, you know, the governance of the future Belarus
or the creation of a special economic zone
somewhere that the land needs to be purchased and governed.
But it's a space where there's enough economic activity
and you can use the whole crypto toolkit, if you like, to innovate transnationally in terms of investment expenditure and that.
Where there are elements which the kind of transparency and the privacy that you can get with crypto tools basically are really beneficial so where you need
to establish new forms of trust that are hard to do because you're not got access to the conventional
areas of trust for instance that you're a member of the russian or belorian opposition rather than, I don't know, a spy or someone who's just
gaining the system or something like that. Whether you're a genuine national of
that country and are entitled to have a say and stake in its future or not and
yet if you tell people honestly about what you want your family back home or where you
live could be in mortal danger and yet the investors and other people who are looking to
invest money and and and trust what you're saying in terms of the decisions they're making, need to trust that the output of the institution is verifiable,
you know, is not corruptible easily.
In all those sort of situations, the sorts of diaspora we're talking about,
diaspora we're talking about, whether they'd even be climate refugees or other
whether they'd even be climate refugees or other things,
things, there are very pressing needs and opportunities to deliver real
solutions for those communities. But I guess the other one, you know, just
talking about it, is to do with communities of interest that want to purchase land so you're talking about
you know eco villages intentional communities and they can be quite small to large so
at the congress on the rebuild day we will be featuring several land projects one maybe Ray you can talk
about Victor's project in Ukraine which is an area of I think 108 hectares to
build a regenerative city there there is also a kind of parallel but entirely different project
with a similar size, slightly larger size,
piece of land in Northern California
to turn into a regenerative community
and address the high costs of housing there,
affordable housing in California.
And so communities that are setting up,
whether it be across Europe, in Portugal,
and other parts of the world,
intentional communities, buying land, sharing land,
and how we do that kind of co-living, co-working,
co-housing arrangements,
and what new forms of asset classes we can introduce
that give you rights to use land,
but it might be put into a community land trust
or, in my case, how I can use my flat
and yet become a network of places
where I can, part of my life, live in London
and work and take all the affordance
that the City of London provides me if you like to network and to access the benefits of
a huge city but also you know take some time and live in the countryside where
it's cheaper more affordable the pace of life is and I can have maybe some
workshop space and I can I can live with or do events with larger communities where we
live together, eat together and we have a kind of rural existence and how you can create networks
there of land which don't all have to be geographically contiguous but can be and cannot be.
There are lots of opportunities for communities to come together and purchase land and I think
of opportunities for communities to come together and purchase land and I think
special economic zones are also interesting there they're at a kind of
more governmental level and they're very interesting as well and I'm
particularly interested and as most of the people that I think we're networking
with it is kind of special economic zones with regenerative focus. So really looking at the future in terms of different value systems,
different ways that the kind of data can be used in that kind of smart city context to
assess not just environmental, but social impact and benefits and how the community
can make decisions about that and
how you can create a kind of, you know, membrane round and interface from that kind of network
state that governs that piece of land with the external financial or governance institutions
so that it can function, survive and sustain in a highly disruptive and dangerous world
out there. So how we can create new governance models where we live and take ownership of actual land
and light away easier examples where we do that just in a virtual network state,
which is looking, which has a need to trade, to transact, has a need to make important, where people have skin in the game,
it's really important to them that they represent their decision to external governance bodies, whether that be the United Nations.
So, for instance, at the Future State Congress, we're on the governance day, like some of the speakers that we're talking to, whether they're coming there in person or not, hasn't been completely pinned down yet. ambassador for the Middle East over the weapons of mass destruction sort of issue, set up the
Independent Diplomat, which is a service to represent and give diplomatic services to various
non-state actors, to diaspora of one sort or another. Or George, I've forgotten his surname,
Ray, you can maybe remind me I'm terrible with names,
who is looking at that in terms of space law and being a space diplomat and how space law is an innovative aspect of law. And I work with the Lexon project on constrained legal languages,
which compile down to various blockchains, right? So how that legal innovation in the area
of conflict resolution, diplomatic representation
of communities, as well as property rights and so forth,
all of that area, there are many interesting
pragmatic spaces and to me, that's the key.
Where are the real opportunities where there is real need and real communities will step forward and say you know I want that I need that
I'll help you build that yeah I believe it's one of our way to make it a hard
type fiction and to make it real because when we're talking about the community
when we're talking about this project like called Gidbudova it's basically a
city that will be built near Vucha which maybe you know it's a city where it was
terrible crime Russians made terrible crime on it and it became very very
hard for people to live in it and they want to create
just new city where this living experience will be much more easier for them and they can create
it from scratch so basically it's it's a free field where everybody can make and contribute
they already have very huge contributions as much as the truth in the institution and etc. etc. But that is where we want to project
people and say hey, here we have a real hard stuff where you can create
anything you want or not everything you want for sure but the reason they people need they want and you will
not have this uh different uh walls to to make this happen and yeah and the science fiction
and one of these science fiction stuff
is that me or is that you, Ray?
I believe I'm talking right now. Yeah, I'm hearing you also.
And one must make it more cosmic and they uh david already uh mentioned george adanos uh he's a space diplomat
the president of the cyprus space exploration organization and it was surprising for us that
this cyprus is really great on uh space and all the stuff and he's also interested in making this happen and how uh how we can set up
walls not only like event like real like like as they said but also in space because it's
Okay, and everything we want.
So I believe it's this part of science fiction,
that we can create real stuff,
this part of this imagination,
and how this future should work.
Right, for sure.
So look, you know, appreciate, you know, that we're probably running up against time here. We have Zeev join us in the audience. And we have time for one quick question or comment, Zeev, if you have a comment for the state, for the future state team.
I came very late and I'm sorry about that. I'm on a lot of telegrams, pretty much as many as I can be that are related to DSi and also Network State.
And there was a Network State Spaces yesterday.
And my question for everybody is, it's going to take me about two weeks, but I'm planning on putting up a spaces, like a regular Twitter spaces for network state and D-Sci together
and a regular one where there's no shilling as far as sponsorships like it's not a media
company it's more of a labor of love and I and I'm it's this is not my expertise this is not
even my personality I think I'd be an okay host But what I'm seeing is there's just too much overlap,
not enough collaboration.
The network state space has had people try to do this before,
but it was polluted and tainted by profit seeking.
I happen to be a lawyer.
I know a lot of people in the network state space
and also the sovereign charter city,
all of that stuff for more than 10 years.
And in the last two years,
I've gotten so excited because of the energy that's coming to the space. And also I'm a lawyer
for crypto companies. I have a startup, an RWA startup. I think what's going on here is amazing.
And I was wondering if you guys think that it's a good idea for someone to try and host a weekly spaces for all network state and decide because
uh it's a lot of work and i'm i don't even i'm i always doubt and question myself and my ideas
i'm a big skeptic of everything including myself but once in a while when you do something you have
to be skeptical of skepticism and jump in and do something so what do you guys think definitely
and jump in and do something so what do you guys think definitely um i'm in we're in i mean in fact
like today we were just talking about and talking to ray before thinking about you know what would
be the ask is um we'd like to do a follow-up event and i'd like to organize a series of um either i
think we agreed in doing it bi-weekly, Ray, somewhere between weekly and monthly meetups.
And exactly no sort of profit-making objective there, but basically inviting people who are interested in working together to realize, build.
It's an invitation to self-worth, as you like to say.
Yeah, sorry, there's a dog here.
I mean, the main thing is that there's so many different groups.
And like I was on a group this morning with Build Cities.
There are a lot of groups that have their own objectives, their own vision, their own leadership.
I'm talking about an unbranded, unbranded spaces.
Yeah, sure. unbranded spaces yes sir
I think I think I think we're losing you but you know I think it's great you know uh i think it's great you know a new potential uh twitter space x face series
you know be sort of born of this episode uh you know you know probably got to close it out there
but basically yeah i mean it's just um to me it's all about who will put energy into that space and teaming up.
So definitely into teaming up and organizing a regular set of discussions on this overlap between work state and decentralized science.
Okay, thank you guys so much for letting me on the spaces.
And also, I'll be active on the
telegram. You'll see me. I'll chat a little bit. Okay. Great. Thank you. Okay. Fantastic. Thanks
for that. We didn't talk at all about the hard science fiction, what it is and what the methodology
is, but the next event that we're interested in hosting is one which really focuses on
that but I don't know whether you want to touch on that subject and why science
fiction and what the anachive is and what performative science is please go
ahead I was gonna just you know circle back on that at the end of the sort of space here so before we go
to hear more about that
yeah maybe maybe we can set up new vent for this and it will be great it was really great
to to be in this teacher space I believe we covered not too much. It will be good to make it in for a while.
And thank you for inviting us and having us here.
And I believe it will be not the last one.
So we will go forward with this.
Yeah, for sure. So I guess, you I guess we'll leave it on that note.
So thanks everyone for joining us.
Looking forward to the future state congress in December.
Make sure to give the speakers a follow and let's all stay in touch.
Definitely beginning of something great here, I feel.
So thanks, everyone.
