Exploring the Seasteading hypothesis: a floating utopia for the techno-solutionist age?

The paper focuses on the Seasteading movement’s quest to build floating libertarian micro-nations in the High Seas, heralded by its proponents as a bold, ‘offshore’ solution to society’s most pressing challenges. The article situates Seasteading within a broader reflection on the evolution of the floating city paradigm over the past century. It unpacks how Seasteading draws from some of its most relevant predecessors, re-signifying and incorporating elements of their technological, spatial, and rhetorical frameworks to construct a compelling market identity and legitimise its anarcho-capitalist agenda. This framing sheds light on the implications of the techno-solutionist form of territorialisation advocated by Seasteading, and the underlying planetary vision it implies.