[Air-L] CFP: 4S Panel on sovereign tech cities

[Rider, Karina (gxy9fq)]

Hello all,

I’d love to invite you to submit for my 4S panel on tech entrepreneurs trying to build new sovereign cities and states!

The panel is titled “Silicon Valley Sovereignty: The Tech Billionaires Building New Cities and the Locals Fighting Back.” See below for a panel description.

Get in touch if you have any questions!
All the best,
Karina
--
Dr. Karina Rider
Assistant Professor @ University of Virginia
Lead Organizer @ Labor Tech Research Network
@kaareeenah.bsky.social // karinarider.com


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In 2022, Balaji Srinivasan--angel investor and tech entrepreneur--published The Network State: How to Start a New Country. In it, he described what he saw as the successor to the nation-state: "highly aligned online communit[ies] with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states." Famous examples of network states include initiatives backed by tech oligarchs: the Seasteading Institute which is building "startup communities that float on the ocean"; and Praxis, an online community attempting to build a 10,000-person city in "the Mediterranean."

Although these proposals may seem fantastical, their grandiose ideals reverberate across time and space, inspiring similar projects on smaller scales. Tech entrepreneurs in California, for example, are investing in building several new cities where they provide the social and material infrastructure for residents. City Campus aims to build a one square-mile miniature city within San Francisco where residents can raise their kids, work, and "engage in local civic and social life." California Forever plans to build a new city twice the size of San Francisco in the middle of farmland. How do these initiatives fit into the network state framework? What do they mean for local displacement, democratic governance, and public services?

The goal of this panel is to bring together scholars interested in exploring how network states are being built and how they impact local residents. Proposals might address questions such as: What exactly are network states, in practice? How are they built, and how do they overcome (or fail to overcome) local resistance? If network states exist along a sliding scale, what elements do they have in common? How do network states engage with local energy sources and how do they impact the environment?