How to build a world: a webinar with the Worldbuilding Academy's core team

[Bill]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:
Provide a foundational infrastructure for all and reward those who go above and beyond in any efforts that benefit humanity.

[Lark]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:

[Ginac]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:

[MikeMc]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:

[jakejackson451]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:
I’m particularly interested in building self-sustaing technology for habitable ecosystems, the methods of which can be used on other exoplanets in planetary regions with stars similar to our own. Also keen to develop this in co-operation with the entire human race, as one people sharing and renewing resources, ideas and knowledge.

[maiki]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:
How would communication work over long distances and enforcing contracts
What currencies (or currency substitutes e. g. bartering systems) might spread out societies use

[AlastairBall]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:
A world where there are different domains based on different political/philosophical ideas and you have the freedom to live in the domain that suits your personal outlook. This is different from our world, where you must live under the political/philosophical views of your government and you have little choice in this

[ledgar]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:
Uncover the concealed costs of the western world’s current economic viewpoint, and consider how a full picture of checks and balances might change how we live and what we believe.

[Chrischeatham]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:

[alberto]

@Ollxor

Add some elements of sociopathy, see what plays out, and how it can be dealt with or not.

Hello Ollxor, welcome back! Hmm, this is indeed interesting. It could lead to an exploration of societal immune systems (if “what plays out” is a pushback), or societal takeover (if it’s surrender, or something else).

@bengansky

I think one of the ‘tricks’ to successful worldbuilding is to determine what about ‘the old world’ sticks around–as ruins, legacies, stockpiles. In what ways does the ‘old stuff’ (both material and ideological) get repurposed, and how does incumbent resistance to change shape the possibilities for novel action?

Ben, indeed. You seem to be calling for a diacronical approach to worldbuilding: not only economics, but economic history. I totally agree. In fact, I asked @yudhanjaya to provide a sort of “origin story”, so that we could come up with compelling accounts of what is there, and how it got there. It’s a point similar to the one @nathanmiller and @Alessandro are making:

@nathanmiller

I’d like to see a cultural timeline from near our world to the possible world we’ll be creating.

@Alessandro

I have thought a lot more about the history of a potential future-world I’ve been personally working on. That aspect is very important to me to build a credible setting.

Let’s do it, guys!

@johncoate

Prevent winner-take-all outcomes

This might be quite hard, depending on the theoretical approach you adopt…

@J12t

A federation of villages, where the economics between villages (“trade”) and within villages (“mutual aid”) are different.

Hello @J12t, welcome! How would you see mutual aid emerging and being sustained? Doctorow’s Walkaway has some ideas here…

@aamhar

What’s going on with new or alternate processes of knowledge production? What’s the relationship with fundamental research and these new economies…?

Hello @aamhar, welcome!

Alternative to what? You seem to have in mind a baseline of basic research as a public good, funded by the collectivity (through tax revenue, for example), and applied research as a private good (privatized via patents), funded by consumers of the goods that incorporate the research. The obvious alternative is one of no patents, or a much weakened patent system. This is a well-studied system in economics because it is what we used to have. Doctorow has several stories on the danger of the patent system – try the novella Unauthorized Bread.

[J12t]

I’m fascinated by the traditional Kibbutz model. I have no first-hand experience, and most kibbutzim seem to have moved off that model in recent years, but it seems to have been stable and quite functional for many decades. Something to be learned here IMHO.

[alberto]

@J12t

I’m fascinated by the traditional Kibbutz model.

Good idea! We could have a part of the open source world run by that model, or a variant thereof. I remember that David from @lasindias wrote about kibbutzim in The book of communities.

[alberto]

@BertillaV

Embracing a Solarpunk mindset in every aspect of our lives, changing the world step by step, from the bottom up.

@steph

In a solarpunk future, we can imagine that economy and trade could happen primarily at a localised scale, instead of being heavily reliant globalised supply chains. However, despite its history of exploitation, global trade was also responsible for the mixing of cultures and exchange of ideas—enabling the (eventual) acceptance of diversity. This is not yet an idea per-se, but perhaps more an angle of consideration: how might we continue to foster diversity in such a future, if the shape of global trade must change?

This is a bit of a personal obsession for me. Solarpunks seem to have a relationship with technology (and each other) that generates a completely different approach to their economic behavior. @matthias knows a lot about this, though his focus is more on a kind of “Robinson economics”, focused on individual/household self-sufficiency. I would really like to see solarpunk thinking in this world we are building.

[matthias]

It’s “Robinson economics” indeed, but it won’t be self-sufficient on the household level. That’s not realistic if we want modern comforts; at the household level, the best we could get would be the very simple tools you could find in a farm in the hinterlands of Nepal. So in my proposed system, which is incidentally called EarthOS , there are these levels, each with more autarky but less mobility than the previous, and each made of multiple instances of the previous level of equipment and organization, and then some more on top:

• L1 (infrastructure)
• L2 (individual)
• L3 (household)
• L4 (village or commune)
• L5 (shipstead)
• L6 (floating city)

@steph

despite its history of exploitation, global trade was also responsible for the mixing of cultures and exchange of ideas—enabling the (eventual) acceptance of diversity. […] how might we continue to foster diversity in such a future, if the shape of global trade must change?

That’s a good point, and my guess is that online collaboration will be the first half of the solution. As in, “Globalize information, localize everything else.” I a solarpunk world, this can work very well for physical items as well, as collaborating on the blueprints of open source machines can well be done over the Internet. A good example of how this could look in practice is Snappy, “the world’s most 3D printable 3D printer”. Open source collaboration on mechanical 3D models has been a challenge, but this project shows what can be done with when really pushing existing open source tools – in this case, it’s pushing OpenSCAD, “the programmer’s 3D CAD”, where 3D models are coded and not drawn.

The second half of the solution could be the organized medium-term exchange of people, similar to traveling monks in earlier times. This is kind of foreshadowed by the digital nomads movement, which has already grown enough to attract the attention of some governments, leading to digital nomad visa schemes.

[becha]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:
Consider the Squirrels! unciv.nl / http://www.unciv.nl

[giacomo.pinaffo]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:

[Til]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:
Planet Earth. Not so far in the future. Poverty isn’t an issue anymore, but people starve for meaning/purpose.

[IreneE]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:

[gopipgo]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:

[Rainer]

I want to take part in the webinar.
Yes

My idea/suggestion for building the world:
As reality is often even more extraordinary than fiction, see the weird example of the Messina social cluster, I suggest to combine/link this great project of collective writing of science fiction stories with researching 10 to 15 real stories like the one of Messina were people in real life are experiencing new paradigms and alternative ways of organizing. It could also cross fertilize the collective inspiration.