Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/hold me in your arms/Nexus/nexus.incoming/virt.technomadic.flotilla

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Subject: The Virtual Technomadic Flotilla (fwd)
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Steve Roberts blew a bubble, which danced and sang:
From [e-mail] Sat Jul  2 09:34:00 1994
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Subject: The Virtual Technomadic Flotilla
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The Virtual Technomadic Flotilla
by Steven K. Roberts
July 1, 1994


Hi folks...

Time for an update.  So much has happened in the past few months that
catching up has become a serious challenge to both my storytelling capacity
and the available network bandwidth.  I'll thus save for later the
harrowing tales of driving to Seattle and picking up the Fulmar X-19 (the
Microship substrate), sailing in the Gulf Islands of Canada, having
accidents and misadventures enroute back, hauling the ship (with the heroic
help of dedicated friends) to the third floor of the engineering building,
my upcoming cruise up the Pacific Coast in a 51-foot yacht, and so on.
This is also not the place for a detailed technical report on the Spring
Quarter student projects, including power management, the video turret,
solar substrate, GPS/compass interface, a neural net autopilot, packet
manpack link, GUI front end, and thruster control.  (Yikes... I need a
full-time archivist!)

The short form is that the Microship is now on a workstand in my lab,
progress on all fronts is excellent, and anticipated launch is June, 1995.

What I do want to talk about here is the travel plan.  As you probably
know, I've been talking up the notion of an aquatic nomadic community --
the Technomadic Flotilla.  Essentially, this would be a group of
like-spirited freelancers and wanderers, all in similarly-scaled
RF-networked shoal-draft small boats with sail and pedal propulsion (plus
optional solar), taking off to travel as a group.  We'd publish a magazine,
do the occasional video project, and pursue freelance activities --
supporting a small number of support people who provide essential services
to the flotilla as a whole.  The notion of a nomadic "intentional
community" is an alluring one, and we've been having an ongoing brainstorm
about this for a few months now that has covered internal economy, job
descriptions, marketing possibilities, a small rental fleet, and more.

Spending a bit of time on the water last week (about 54 miles) gave me a
lot of time to think this through further, and I'd like to present a
refined notion of how the Technomadic Flotilla might work.  There are a few
sticky problems with the original idea that could become very serious in
practice...


-->  Boats of different designs will inevitably move at different speeds
under different conditions.  A consistent source of interpersonal stress
would result from a daily spread of many miles between leading and lagging
boats.  At some range, this would overtax our Flotilla-net, dropping nodes
and breaking both voice and email links.

-->  The logistical complexity of finding daily accommodations for 10-20
people would be staggering -- it can sometimes be a challenge just to find
a place for 1-2 people to sleep.  This complexity extends to provisioning,
repair, dock space in marinas, and everything else... although it's offset
significantly by economy of scale and enough people to provide guard
service, maintenance, and so on.

-->  Timing is a problem when multiple people from around the world attempt
to bring parallel complex projects to fruition, transport the boats to a
launch site, and depart on schedule.  Building even a small
Flotilla-capable craft is a full-time expensive obsession, and the year
remaining is already a squeeze.  If we had Deep Pockets to fund a large
group staging area, it would be different.

-->  There's another problem associated with developing systems all over
the place and then forming up into a group -- personalities.  There are
nutcases out there on the Net, believe it or not, and alternative
lifestyles like this tend to attract them (I get some very strange
letters).  I don't want to discover on the eve of departure that we have a
major personality clash developing.

-->  Having a few people producing cashflow and others along for the ride
could create stress, though we've discussed a sort of "small town model"
where internal exchanges of goods or services follow basic capitalistic
supply-demand rules.  Still, adding the Flotilla medic, for example, would
have to be a group decision, since that person would have to eat, outfit a
boat, handle repairs, and be insured.  It's the old problem of resentments
arising from perceived unequal contributions to a common cause.

-->  Imagine a dozen people traveling together... and the need for daily
consensus about where to go, what to do, how long to stay, whom to visit,
where to meet up after groups or individuals splinter off, how long to stay
put when one person is sick or has a dismasting, and so on.


All of this got me thinking, as I was zipping freely among perfect little
Canadian islands, landing when I felt like it, lounging on the tramps to
gaze at the snow-capped Olympics, hanging around to chat with people,
changing course on a whim, and more or less doing as I pleased.  Do I
really want to complicate this elegantly efficient existence?  No.  But I
most emphatically DO see the value of forming a community of nomads,
sharing resources and talents for maximum business effectiveness and
built-in loneliness-prevention.  Hmmmmmm....

Consider this.  The whole thrust of this technomadic concept, ever since my
early days aboard the Winnebiko, is the notion that physical location
becomes irrelevant once you move the essence of your life to the vapors of
the Net.  While this doesn't replace physical relationships (at least for
most of us!), it does decouple you from the bonds that normally tie people
down, Gulliver-like -- those countless little threads that all have to be
broken at once in order to move.  The basic trick is to add one level of
indirection to all business matters, depending on a base office and
electronic communications for all activity.  This only works, of course, if
your business is information-based or deals in small, portable things.

One of my dreams for the Flotilla is to publish a magazine, and do
occasional videos and other media projects.  This does not require people
to be sitting around the same campfire -- in fact, the results are more
interesting if they're NOT.

So here's the deal:  We create a VTF (Virtual Technomadic Flotilla),
consisting of travelers all over the world, linked tightly through the Net
and sharing base-office resources.  No longer does it matter what kind of
boats people prefer (or even land vehicles), since speed variations are
irrelevant.  People can travel as individuals, couples, or small groups --
whatever feels good.  Consensus about daily plans is not a problem.  People
can join, or leave, whenever they want.  Yet we can collectively benefit
from the economy of scale by each paying a small percentage of our income
to "Flotilla, Inc.," consisting mostly of a suitably staffed office
somewhere, handling banking, accounting, publishing, taxes, bills,
archiving, message forwarding, and so on.

Projects would take the form of joint ventures between freelancers, and the
magazine could simply pay contributors a percentage of issue cashflow or a
page rate that grows with circulation.  Each issue would carry tales and
columns from all over, with different perspectives but thematically
connected.  Someone might become the VTF videographer, driving or flying
around to spend time with various adventurers, knitting their diverse
stories into a whole.  And the rendezvous parties would be killer... not to
mention the occasional groups that would coalesce for a shared adventure
before resuming their individual treks.

                                * * *

My own plans are on track -- the Microship is the focus of the next full
year of work.  I've been doing very few updates via email -- Gopher to
microship.ucsd.edu or use Mosaic to http://microship.ucsd.edu/index.html
for project status reports and other material.  I'm going to finishi this
ship and launch no matter what, and not having to manage a group frees me
to concentrate on my boat and my own overdue publishing projects.  I might
want to travel with a companion or two, but even that starts to introduce
many of the same complexities noted above.  Trade-offs.  Freedom versus
security...

If this revised notion strikes a chord, or if you have comments or
suggestions, please respond.  This is currently cross-posted to two
listservs plus the invitation-only status report mailing list (BCC:), and I
apologize to those of you who have received multiple copies!  Someday, our
list software should learn to prevent such things...

Cheers from the Microship lab!


   Steve






if we do not hold on to hedonism, we will lose our souls.   -- mordwyn

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