Can Bernard Way Kickstart "Arc Island" and Beat Seasteading.org?

Patri Friedman's Seasteading.org has been the primary website for seasteaders for a number of years now. Certainly Patri has worked the PR circuit and appeared on a number of TV shows and in some prestigious publications. He is currently in The Bahamas, giving a talk on seasteading at the Association of Private Enterprise Education.

The only way for Bernard Way to push Patri out of the limelight would be to deliver on a promise which Patri has so far been unable to keep: to build an actual working seastead.

Arc Island will be the largest civil engineering project in history, to build an entire floating structure the size of Manhattan that can be moved to different locations in the world, can be built upon and using a completely modular approach expanded as it grows.

We are creating a new civilisation from scratch, the scientific, economic, social and technological implications are huge; this is not an extension of another country, this will be its own country, with its own economic, political and legal structure. We want to take all the cutting edge ideas from all disciplines and apply them to this idea, and we want you to be part of it. _Kickstarter

Kickstarter is a fundraising site, and Mr. Way is working the site in order to get a start on necessary fundraising -- in order to start the new civilisation.

We’ve seen some great projects come out of Kickstarter, but nothing can top this. UK-born, SF-living Benjamin Peter Bernard Way wants to make an island. Oh, but not just any island. His Arc Island concept would be movable. Ah yes, and it would also be the size of Manhattan.

You see, Mr. Way has some big ideas. With big ideas come big projects, and this one is no exception. He’s had a number of ideas over the years, raising £25 million for a venture known as Pulsar while still in his teens. Though he was diluted out of the business, Way wasn’t to be kept down.

In the years that have followed his departure from Pulsar, Way has been involved with no fewer than 10 different companies. In fact, if his last name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the brother of Hermione Way, the founder of Newspepper and our hostess with the mostess for TNW Video. _TheNextWeb_via_ImpactLab

The proof is in the pudding, not in the PR or the fundraising. But when it comes to competition for achieving world-changing enterprises, the more the merrier. Certainly Mr. Way's "Manhattan sized floating island" concept is somewhat more ambitious than Patri Friedman's mini-stead concept he is floating currently.

May the best seastead win, and actually provide meaningful societal and civilisational choices, in a world that is growing ideologically and Idiocratically hidebound.