The Digital Age: Creating New Societies
Humans have a very long history of running away from the societies they decided they don’t like anymore. This was especially popular in the hunter-gatherer and foraging times. Kings, Chieftains and sometimes Queens were often kept at a distance, their influence and power often limited to who was within eyesight. Many societies had two leaders, one for winter and one for summer.
Today, when we want to try something new, there’s not really anywhere left to run away too. The whole city of Toronto, should it wake up one day and decide it no longer likes the mayor and wants to go away, can’t. New York or Montréal or any other city wouldn’t be very happy with a few million cars and busses rolling into town to set up a new city. Never mind all the other implications of State and federal laws and crossing international borders.
We are in an unprecedented period of mass migrations. Both legal and illegal. They are the result of conflict, socioeconomics, political systems and climate change. This is going to increase in the coming decades. This will put intense pressures on nations and geopolitical systems.
Revolutionary technologies have and will, play a role. The internet connected us at a global scale unlike ever before in history. Tools like social media enabled us to share our cultural norms, values, traditions and behaviours on a scale never before known to us.
This global scale of sharing relates to something humans do a lot. Create ideas, imagine new futures and how we want to organise our society. Technology itself is created by the act of human imagination.
In the 60’s and 70’s, there were the hippy communes, who eventually moved back to the cities and created social media. While it’s hard to say if we’re in a period of imagining new ideas for societies than ever before, digital communications technologies are playing a key role in in creating and sharing ideas as well as organising them more efficiently than ever before.
How We’re Imagining New Societies in the Digital Age
Some are seeking physical space to run away, to create new sociocultural systems. Some are creating virtual societies, although these aren’t much more than social networks and would be limited in their real-world impacts. Some are carving out space within their current nations while respecting the Rule of Law.
Social groups do this for a number of reasons; religious, spiritual, political, ideological.
As thinker Scott Galloway points out, in America, one of these groups attempting to leave America, or be ready for the doomsday global societal collapse scenario are none other than Silicon Valley elites. Rather than use their wealth and influence to make their country better, they run away. They’re not the first, or only.
Some of these elites are working to build new societies in the ocean, seasteading it’s called. Basically a whole bunch of utopian floating ocean cities. It’s an interesting concept. Some cities might be underwater too. Can’t sleep? Count fish instead of sheep.
Some of these initiatives stay within their current nation state, aiming to work like a state within a state. In the 1970’s they would’ve been referred to as communes. One is called Cabin. Yes, everyone lives in cabins. They’re called coliving neighbourhoods. Communal living, but not a commune. Can’t sleep? Go outside and count the stars.
Others are looking to build more egalitarian communities within existing cities with some degree of autonomy that can work within existing political frameworks. An example is Oceanix in Busan, South Korea. It’s quite interesting. It is an imagined future society.
An interesting example of a phased approach to building a future society, is Afropolitan, which has a four phase plan to actually acquire physical land, working with existing governments to create a new state within a state. They base their model on a book and ideology written by self-proclaimed crypto-philosopher Balaji Srinivasan (yes, Silicon Valley guy, if you’re wondering.) There are other billionaires doing similar things like building cities in deserts and other remote areas.
One interesting aspect of many of these ideas of new societies is that they’re very egalitarian in nature. Though some like seastedding and Oceanix don’t really dive into how they’ll be governed. Which is rather important.
What Does the Future of Societies Hold?
Most of these groups aren’t out to change the entire world and the majority are peaceful. They’re simply doing what humans in social groups have always been doing; exploring ways to live together. Some base their ideology on deep dissatisfaction with their current political and economic systems. Others frame it within the context of a coming global collapse and as a means of survival when it happens.
There are of course, social organisations that are inherently violent in their revolutionary ideas and seeking the overthrow of governments or changing the whole world. Islamic State and the Taliban for example. Christian Nationalism in the USA is another. These are more often Revitalisation Movements who imagine a future built on a nostalgic past that never existed. When up against the Leviathan, they often fail. They’re too radical and extreme for the majority, who prefer a more egalitarian mode of society. Hobbes would disagree.
Some of these peaceful groups may come to fully realise their ideals. Most will not. Or they may form something for a period of time and then come back to the city and create a new form of social media that’s better and influence a broader evolution in sociocultural systems.
We are entering into a time of significant global, sociocultural change. It is part of the reason that we see these social groups exploring new ideas of living and working. Communications technology is playing a vital role in these re-imagining of societies. One notes too, that the majority tend to be based on more egalitarian ideals, much like our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Perhaps our ancestors were smarter than we tend to give them credit for?
