CAD, Compliance, and Civilization

My Brief Experience with Seasteading’s Classification Society

Seasteading is a term that evokes science fiction — floating cities, decentralized governance, and ocean-based innovation. But it’s not fiction. It’s a serious engineering and political proposition advanced by The Seasteading Institute (TSI), where I briefly volunteered as an illustrator for their Classification Society project.

The Premise: A Rational Solution to Systemic Constraints

The central idea of seasteading is pragmatic: relocate civilization from land — limited by politics, real estate, and environmental degradation — to the ocean, which covers over 70% of the planet and is underutilized. The ocean is not utopia. It’s a new frontier for experimentation, both technologically and socially.

TSI proposes that floating platforms can serve as prototypes for alternate systems of living — governance, energy, food, and habitation. The hypothesis is that competition between micro-societies would produce better governance outcomes through iteration and exit, rather than through voting or reform.

What is a Classification Society?

Before a vessel floats, someone needs to certify it. In the maritime world, this is the job of a Classification Society — a non-governmental technical body that sets construction standards for ships and offshore structures. These societies write the rules, inspect compliance, and issue certificates of seaworthiness.

TSI is attempting to build its own internal classification system for seasteads — because no existing authority has frameworks that apply to floating cities. Their proposed Classification Society would:

• Develop technical standards adapted to modular floating habitats

• Offer cost-effective services for early-stage ocean innovators

• Enable registration and insurance for seasteads

• Serve as a technical support system to verify and iterate designs

The work is largely procedural: reviewing existing maritime codes, adapting them to the unique engineering problems of seasteads, and documenting it all in an Engineering Review List.

My Role: Technical Illustrator

My involvement was limited in duration, but precise in scope. I volunteered as a remote illustrator. My task was to produce technical diagrams and construction sketches that visualize the design standards under review.

This required:

• Learning CAD tools like AutoCAD

• Understanding structural terminology and standards

• Producing accurate illustrations to support engineering reviews

Despite the short timeframe, this opportunity allowed me to:

• Sharpen my CAD skills

• Receive certifications from Autodesk

• Collaborate on technical documentation

• Observe the rigor of classification frameworks from the inside

Takeaways

1. This is early-stage work: The classification effort is in its infancy. It is rigorous but moves slowly, largely due to limited personnel and funding.

2. The technology is not flawless: Not all proposed engineering solutions are optimal. Many are theoretical or rely on existing offshore models adapted for new purposes.

3. Seasteading is not a cure-all: It will not “liberate humanity” overnight, nor solve global inequality in one stroke. But it offers a useful sandbox to test alternatives.

4. Decentralization through engineering: Unlike political manifestos, this movement relies on physical implementation — steel, ballast, and design constraints.

5. There’s a real need for contributors: Engineers, architects, designers, regulatory experts. The barrier to entry isn’t ideology — it’s technical skill.

Final Thought

Seasteading offers a thought experiment that becomes sharper the more you engage with its engineering realities. My contribution was minor, but it gave me a direct view into a bold (albeit niche) civilizational experiment. The scale is daunting. The vision is abstract. The work is slow. But the questions it raises — about sovereignty, innovation, and the limits of existing governance — are worth asking.

You don’t have to be utopian to think that our current systems are flawed. You just have to be pragmatic enough to explore alternatives — and intelligent enough to prototype them.