Description

描述

Technology has enabled us to start new companies, new communities, and new currencies. But can we use it to start new cities, or even new countries? This book explains how to build the successor to the nation state, a concept we call the network state.

技术赋予了我们创办新型公司、新型社区和新货币的能力。可是我们是否用技术来建立新型城市，甚至新型国家？本书解释了如何建立民族国家的后继者，一个我们称之为网络国家的概念。

Chapter 1 Quickstart

第一章：快速开始

Preamble

序言

Are you the kind of person who skims the beginning just to see whether to read the entire thing? You’re in luck.

你是那种略过开头就想读完正本书的人吗？你很幸运。

We’ve prepared one sentence, one image, one thousand word, and one essay summaries of the concepts behind startup societies and network states. Just click those links if you’re impatient. And of course, for the full experience, you can read it one page at a time.

我已经准备了一句话、一张图片、一千字和一篇文章总结了初创社会和网络状态的概念。如果你不耐烦，就点击这些链接。当然，为了获得完整的体验，你可以一页页地阅读。

Speaking of pages, every section of this book is online and shareable as an individual web page. For example, the URL to this section is thenetworkstate.com/preamble. This allows you to link directly1 to any bit of the book for discussion. Moreover, unlike the typical book that’s frozen in time, think of this as a dynamic bookapp that gets continuously updated. You can see the latest version online, or you can follow the instructions at thenetworkstate.com/kindle.gif to get the latest version on your Kindle.

说到每页，这本书的每一节都是在网上的，作为单个的网页来分享。例如，本节的URL是 thenetworkstate.com/preamble。这允许你直接到书中的任何一点进行讨论。此外，这本书与典型静态在某时间点的书不同，把它看作是不断更新的动态图书程序。你可以在网上看到最新版本，或者你可以按照 thenetworkstate.com/kindle.gif 的说明在你的Kindle上获得最新版本。

When reading it, think of this work as a toolbox, not a manifesto. You don’t need to agree with all of it to get something out of it. We’ve structured it in modular form for that reason. Chapter 1 is an overview of the ideas. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 present an analysis that leads to a concerning forecast for the near future, the problem of American Anarchy and Chinese Control. And Chapter 5 presents our proposed solution for maintaining liberal values in an illiberal world: startup societies and network states.

在阅读时，把这个作品看作是一个工具箱，而不是一个宣言。你不需要同意它的全部内容，就能从中得到一些东西。出于这个原因，我们以模块的形式来组织它。第一章是对这些想法的概述。第二章、第三章和第四章提出了一个分析，导致了对不久的将来的预测，即美国无政府状态和中国管控的问题。第五章介绍了我们提出的在一个不自由的世界中保持自由价值观的解决方案：初创社会和网络国家。

But what exactly is a network state?

但究竟什么是网络国家？

The Network State in One Sentence

一句话描述网络国家

In one informal sentence:

用一句话非正式的话语

A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.

网络国家是一个高度一致的网上社区，具有集体行动的能力，在全世界范围内众筹领土，并最终获得现有国家的外交承认。

When we think of a nation state, we immediately think of the lands, but when we think of a network state, we should instantly think of the minds. That is, if the nation state system starts with the map of the globe and assigns each patch of land to a single state, the network state system starts with the 7+ billion humans of the world and attracts each mind to one or more networks.

当我们想到一个民族国家时，我们立即想到土地，但当我们想到一个网络国家时，我们应该立即想到意志。也就是说，如果民族国家体系从全球地图开始，将每块土地分配给一个国家，那么网络国家体系则从世界上70多亿人开始，将每个人的思想吸引到一个或多个网络。

Here’s a more complex definition that extends that concept and pre-emptively covers many edge cases:

这里有一个更复杂的定义，它扩展了这个概念并提前涵盖了许多边际情况。

A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition.

网络国家是一个具有道德创新、民族意识、公认的创始人、集体行动能力、个人文明程度、综合加密货币、受社会智能合约限制的共识政府、众筹实体领土的群岛、虚拟资本，以及链上人口统计，证明有足够多的人口、收入和不动产足迹，以达到一定程度的外交承认。

OK, that’s a mouthful! It’s lengthy because there are many internet phenomena that share some but not all of the properties of a network state. For example, neither Bitcoin nor Facebook nor a DAO is a network state, because each lacks certain qualities – like diplomatic recognition – which are core to anything we’d think of as the next version of the nation state.

好吧，这是一个口号! 它之所以冗长，是因为有许多互联网现象共享一些网络国家的属性，但不是全部。例如，比特币、Facebook和DAO都不是网络国家，因为它们都缺乏某些特质--比如外交承认--而这些特质是我们认为的下一版民族国家的核心。

(If you want to skip ahead, we expand on each part of the definition in Chapter 5. But it’ll make more sense if you read the text all the way through. For what it’s worth, the technical definition of a nation state is similarly multi-clausal, because it needs to exclude things we don’t typically think about, like stateless nations.)

(如果你想跳过，我们会在第五章中对定义的每个部分进行扩展。但是，如果你把文本全部读完，就会更有意义。值得一提的是，民族国家技术上的定义同样是多因素，因为需要排除我们通常不考虑的东西，比如无国籍国家。)

The Network State in One Image

一张图描述网络国家

A picture helps. The dashboard above shows what a million-person network state looks like on the map. Specifically, it depicts a network state with 1.7 million people, more than 157 billion dollars in annual income, and a 136 million square meter footprint.

借助图片。上面的仪表板显示了一个百万人口的网络国家在地图上的样子。具体来说，它描绘了一个拥有170万人口、年收入超过1570亿美元、占地面积为1.36亿平方米的网络国家。

The first thing we notice is that a network state isn’t physically centralized like a nation state, nor limited in scale like a city state. It’s geographically decentralized and connected by the internet.

我们注意到的第一点是，网络国家不像民族国家那样在物理上集中，也不像城市国家那样在规模上有限。它在地理上是分散的，通过互联网连接。

The second thing we see is that you could feasibly start this kind of country from your computer. That is, just as Facebook grew from one person’s laptop, a million-person network state that owns a global archipelago of physical territory could start as a one-person startup society, as shown in this gif: thenetworkstate.com/networkstate.gif.

我们看到的第二点是，你可以从你的电脑上自行启动这种国家。也就是说，就像Facebook是从个人的笔记本电脑发展起来的一样，一个拥有物理领土的上百万人的全球群岛的网络国家可以从一个人的初创社会开始，就像这个GIF中所示。[thenetworkstate.com/networkstate.gif]（https://thenetworkstate.com/networkstate.gif）。

The third thing we see is how central the real-time census is to the network state. The dashboard shown combines concepts from coins, companies, and countries to focus a society on growth in people, annual income, and real estate footprint.

我们看到的第三点是，实时人口普查对网络状态是多么核心。所示的仪表板结合了代币、公司和国家的概念，将社会的重点放在人的增长、年收入和资产足迹上。

Continued growth is a continuous plebiscite, a vote of confidence by the people inside who remain and those outside who apply. Roughly speaking, a successful network state is one that attracts aligned immigrants, and an unsuccessful network state is one that loses them.

持续增长是一种持续的公民投票，是由国家里面的人和外面的人申请的信任投票。粗略地说，一个成功的网络国家是一个吸引相同移民的国家，而一个不成功的网络国家是一个失去他们的国家。

That doesn’t mean each network state must grow to infinity, or that all states need accept the same kind of person, but that the community of network states as a whole is focused on building admirable societies that people want to join. Different states will focus on different metrics; imagine a network state premised on improving its citizens’ overall life expectancy, or one aimed at provably right-shifting the income distribution for all. You get what you measure.

这并不意味着每个网络国家必须发展到无限大，也不意味着所有的国家都需要接受同一类人，而是意味着网络国家的社区作为一个整体，专注于建立人们愿意加入的令人景仰的社会。不同的国家将专注于不同的衡量标准；想象一下，一个网络国家的前提是提高其公民的整体 预期寿命，或者一个旨在为所有人证明正确转移 收入分配的国家。你得到你所想的。

The Network State in One Thousand Words

一千字描述网络国家

Technology has allowed us to start new companies, new communities, and new currencies. But can we use it to create new cities, or even new countries? A key concept is to go cloud first, land last — but not land never — by starting with an online community and then materializing it into the physical world. We get there in seven steps:

技术使我们能够创办新公司、新社区和新货币。但我们能不能用它来创造新的城市，甚至新的国家？一个关键的概念是先有云，后有地--但不是永远没有地--从一个在线社区开始，然后将其具象化到物理世界。我们通过七个步骤达到这个目的。

1. Found a startup society. This is simply an online community with aspirations of something greater. Anyone can found one, just like anyone can found a company or cryptocurrency.2 And the founder’s legitimacy comes from whether people opt to follow them.

   创建初创社会，这是一个简单在线社区并有更大愿景。任何人都可以创建一个，就像任何人都可以创建一个公司或加密货币一样。2而创始人的合法性来自于人们是否选择跟随他们。

2. Organize it into a group capable of collective action. Given a sufficiently dedicated online community, the next step is to organize it into a network union. Unlike a social network, a network union has a purpose: it coordinates its members for their mutual benefit. And unlike a traditional union, a network union is not set up solely in opposition to a particular corporation, so it can take a variety of different collective actions.3 Unionization is a key step because it turns an otherwise ineffective online community into a group of people working together for a common cause.

   *组织一个能够集体行动的团体。*如果有一个足够专注的在线社区，下一步就是将其组织成一个网络联盟。与社会网络不同，网络联盟有一个目的：该联盟协调成员，以实现他们的共同利益。而且与传统的工会不同，网络工会的建立并不只是为了反对某个特定的公司，所以它可以采取各种不同的集体行动。3 团结是一个关键步骤，因为它将一个原本无效的网络社区变成一个为共同事业而工作的群体。

3. Build trust offline and a cryptoeconomy online. Begin holding in-person meetups in the physical world, of increasing scale and duration, while simultaneously building an internal economy using cryptocurrency.

   *建立线下的信任和线上的加密经济。*开始在现实世界中举行面对面的聚会，随着规模和持续时间不断增加，同时使用加密货币建立一个内部经济。

4. Crowdfund physical nodes. Once sufficient trust has been built and funds have been accumulated, start crowdfunding apartments, houses, and even towns to bring digital citizens into the physical world within real co-living communities.

   *众筹物理节点。*一旦建立了足够的信任并积累了资金，就开始众筹公寓、房屋和甚至城镇，将数字公民带入真实的共同生活社区的物理世界中。

5. Digitally connect physical communities. Link these physical nodes together into a network archipelago, a set of digitally connected physical territories distributed around the world. Nodes of the network archipelago range from one-person apartments to in-person communities of arbitrary size. Physical access is granted by holding a web3 cryptopassport, and mixed reality is used to seamlessly link the online and offline worlds.

   以数字化连接真实社区。将这些物理节点连接成一个网络群岛，一组数字连接的物理领土分布在世界各地。网络群岛的节点范围从一个人的公寓到任意规模的人际社区。物理访问是通过持有web3加密护照而获得的，混合现实被用来无缝连接在线和离线世界。

6. Conduct an on-chain census. As the society scales, run a cryptographically auditable census to demonstrate the growing size of your population, income, and real-estate footprint. This is how a startup society proves traction in the face of skepticism.

   *进行链上人口普查。*随着社会规模的扩大，进行一次可加密审计的人口普查，以证明你的人口、收入和资产足迹的增长规模。这是一个初创社会在面对怀疑时证明其吸引力的方法。

7. Gain diplomatic recognition. A startup society with sufficient scale should eventually be able to negotiate for diplomatic recognition from at least one pre-existing government, and from there gradually increased sovereignty, slowly becoming a true network state.

   获得外界承认。一个具有足够规模的初创社会能够通过谈判最终获得至少一个现存的政府的外交承认，并从那里逐渐增加主权，慢慢成为一个真正的网络国家。

The key idea is to populate the land from the cloud, and do so all over the earth. Unlike an ideologically disaligned and geographically centralized legacy state, which packs millions of disputants in one place, a network state is ideologically aligned but geographically decentralized. The people are spread around the world in clusters of varying size, but their hearts are in one place.

关键的想法是要在云端延伸到地球上的土地。与意识形态不一致和地理集中的传统国家不同，网络国家在意识形态上是一致的，但地理上是分散的。人们分布在世界各地，形成大小不一的集群，但他们的心都在一个地方。

As the population and economy of a startup society grow comparable to that of a legacy state, with millions of citizens and billions in income, it should eventually4 be able to attain recognition from existing sovereigns — and ultimately the United Nations — just as Bitcoin has now become a bona fide national currency.

随着初创社会的人口和经济增长与传统国家相当，拥有数百万公民和数十亿收入，它最终4能够获得现有主权国家的承认--并最终获得联合国的承认--就像比特币现在已经成为一种真正的国家货币。