Hermicity: A Drone-Based City Where Inhabitants Eat Soylent

Hermicity is a proposed community for hermits. The inhabitants would live on their own to cater to their need for isolation, they won’t even need to go to the grocery store. Drones would be used to deliver the meal alternative Soylent to the people paying to live in the community. What’s more is that the entire operation will be based around a blockchain!

This is how it’s described on the website:

A hermit colony ran as a decentralised autonomous organisation on the ethereum blockchain.

We now have the technology to allow people to live completely alone. Drones will airlift soylent packets and water to the members of the hermit colony.

Membership is paid with ether to a smart contract. The smart contract sends drone from a solar powered docking station to the members.

In an interview this is the way the creator described his motivation:

almost every great thinker has spent much time alone. I know the time I have spent alone (admittedly somewhat forced by circumstance) has made me a wiser, more intelligent person. Perhaps by making being alone more accessible we can unlock a lot of human potential that is standing idle at the moment, locked away in bodies that are too distracted by the other bodies around them and are therefore unable to look in and unlock their unique ideas and energy.

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Never Disregard Kierkegaard

Relax

There is a trend in our culture to be proud of how busy one is – and this approach to busyness isn’t a good attitude. Instead, we should look to Søren Kierkegaard the Danish existentialist who advocates for reflection on what one is doing and not how much one is doing. This can be hard in a world in which people are prideful of not taking vacation time.

You can begin positive change in your life today – just take a few minutes and think about what really matters.

Stephen Evans, a philosophy professor at Baylor University, explains that Kierkegaard saw busyness as a means of distracting oneself from truly important questions, such as who you are and what life is for. Busy people “fill up their time, always find things to do,” but they have no principle guiding their life. “Everything is important but nothing is important,” he adds.

Without answering crucial and terrifying questions about life, without deciding on a unified purpose, Kierkegaard believed that one could not develop a self. He called those with without one unified purpose “double minded,” and argued that this mindset causes busyness.

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Minimalism

Minimalism is good.

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Thanks to Delaney!

A Way to Think About Digital Currency Replacing Cash

Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and other digital currencies are shaking up how the internet thinks about money. In turn, this has forced countries and large institutions to rethink how money works and who claims to have control over it. Perhaps it’s time for the decentralized blockchain-systems to replaced by a robot-controlled centrally-backed system. Or, at the very least, let’s think about it.

Currently, coins and paper notes are the only state-issued money available for use by you and me; the vast bulk of what we normally call “money” is a deposit with a bank. Up to a limit (currently €100,000 in Europe), this is state-backed in the sense that the government guarantees that it will be available for spending no matter what happens with the bank. Even this is surprisingly recent. On the eve of the financial crisis, the pan-European limit was much lower and EU law explicitly prohibited deposit insurance schemes from being backed by the state (they had to be industry-funded schemes).

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Kickstarter CEO Wants You to Have a New Job

Yancey Strickler is the CEO and cofounder of Kickstarter he sees the future of work and the economy different than most CEOs. Strickler sees a future with people working jobs that actually matter for causes that make the world a better a place. Instead of profit over people, we can have people who all profit.

He suggests many alternatives to the bland, “normal”, work life of 9-5 in a depressing office. You can work for a co-op, a charity, a benefit corporation, or do your own thing!

This is a talk about what happens when a culture is driven by the need for money to make more money.

Don’t sell out your values, don’t sell out your community, don’t sell out the long term for the short term. Do something because you believe it’s wonderful and beneficial, not to get rich.

And — very important — if you plan to do something on an ongoing basis, ensure its sustainability. This means your work must support your operations and you don’t try to grow beyond that without careful planning. If you do those things you can easily maintain your independence.

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