Dreaming Systems: Where No Human Had Gone Before

Imagine that somewhere, a new country were discovered. Atlantis, perhaps.

Or a previously unknown region in Germany - somewhere between Marburg and Kassel, let’s say. Through thousands, tens of thousands of years of civilization in Central Europe, some valley in Hesse was simply overlooked. The various clans and tribes and nations active in the area simply forgot to go there. Even the Neanderthals. Even the scouts. Even the people from the TV license authority.

A few hundred thousand hectares, then, discovered by accident the way one finds a forgotten banknote while cleaning up.

Perhaps you and I are traveling by car, on our way from Marburg to Kassel, for whatever reason. I’m driving (this is my book, so I get to drive the car). We take the wrong exit, the road ends. I don’t want to admit my mistake and just keep driving.

We pass through a dense forest. I worry about the underside of the car, but it survives.

And then suddenly: a clearing.

From this point on: virgin territory.

No roads, no settlements, as far as the eye can see. No power lines, no billboards. Not even old tires someone illegally dumped into the landscape.

So we have discovered new land, and we are delighted. Since no human has ever been there before, it has no owner and belongs to no state.

It simply belongs to us now.

Please don’t be so pedantic as to ask about the legal basis for this. Finders keepers. It is an ancient legal principle familiar from every schoolyard.

In any case, we get out of the car, look around, and like what we see: wildflowers are blooming, bees are humming, somewhere a stream gently runs through the scenery.

Ideas immediately begin bubbling up about what could be done with the land.

We quickly agree that we want to keep it. But we will share it with others - we are not monsters, are we? Other people could, for a modest amount of money, acquire the right to settle here. We would then establish the rules. Perhaps we will also allow other people to make money here, though we are not yet entirely sure about that. We ourselves will definitely start a business here - wellness tourism, perhaps. Or fracking.

But before any of that can work, we first need infrastructure. We cannot expect people to drive through the undergrowth like we did and ruin the underside of their cars. We need roads, and the roads need lighting; we need sewage systems and electricity. And we must build at least one house so that the government and executive leadership (that is, us) have somewhere to stay. It should also be representative, so that all newcomers immediately understand the situation.

All of this costs money.

We drive back through the forest, find the country road again, continue our journey to Kassel, and brainstorm in the car about how to obtain funding.

Eventually, you have a brilliant idea: the people who later want to live there could pay us before any of it becomes reality. You assure me that this is quite common in other contexts. You point to lotteries, real estate funds, and pension systems.

I like the idea very much and am extremely pleased that I brought you along in the car. The trip would have been boring alone.

By the time we arrive in Kassel, we have already devised the next step: we divide the usage rights to our new land into small packages and then sell them. Let’s say in the form of tokens.

When we drive back to Marburg the next morning (because we had actually forgotten what we wanted in Kassel in the first place), our plan becomes even more concrete: we come up with measures to publicize the new land and our marvelous offer.

Obviously: the greater the demand, the higher the prices we can charge. But for demand to arise, lots of people first need to hear about it.

We decide on social media advertising, billboards in all major German cities, and an advertisement in the newsletter of your sports club.

The message of our advertising is always the same:

Buy our tokens! Then you receive the right to do things on our land as well. For example, you may use it to walk your dog. And in addition, we are planning an excellent business on the land - wellness tourism (or fracking). And if you buy the tokens, you will later receive discounts on all services in our wellness hotel (or cheap oil).

The first skeptical questions begin to arrive:

How do we know, people ask, that you will keep your promises? What if we come to walk our dog and there are no walking paths? What if the wellness hotel is never built? What if you never find oil through fracking?

We always answer the questions in the same way.

Point one: We are trustworthy. You can tell just by looking at us.

Point two: We are storing our agreement on a blockchain. The entire world will be able to read it afterward.

Point three: Why all the doubts? How often does one discover entirely new land in the middle of Germany? Anyone who does not get in now will miss the opportunity of a lifetime! And those who enter early receive a particularly large piece of the pie at a particularly favorable price.

Point three always works.

And now we are in business: the money starts flowing toward us.

And this, you have probably realized by now, is exactly the way blockchain startups around 2017 collected their startup capital. And what I wrote a few paragraphs earlier - the reasons people should invest in our land venture - is a whitepaper in very, very short form.

The dream of free, untouched land is perhaps as old as humanity’s practice of agriculture. It was, I assume, the reason why the first humans did not simply remain in Africa, or later in the Fertile Crescent. This is how conquests and wars were justified. This is also how humans came to spread across almost the entire world and claim ownership. (Now even in a forgotten valley between Marburg and Kassel.)

The drive to discover something new and improve one’s circumstances is, in any case, reliable enough to make people leave their countries, embark on uncertain journeys, and even buy uncertain promises. Because when land in the real world becomes scarce, platforms in cyberspace must take its place.

When Angela Merkel said at a press conference with then-US President Barack Obama in 2013 that the internet was Neuland, new territory, for all of us, the entire online world mocked her for it. My suspicion is that the people who laughed loudest were those who secretly still found the internet, beyond eBay and Amazon, deeply uncanny and confusing themselves.

In fact, Merkel showed surprisingly good instinct in her choice of words.

Because that is exactly what the internet has repeatedly been since its beginnings: new territory.

Every time a new technology or new possibilities online gather momentum—whether email or online shopping or blockchain or social media or chatbots—the internet once again becomes: unexplored land.

Some people are skeptical and stay away as long as possible. Others rush forward and settle the new territory—or at least try to. Some fall for opportunists promising to sell them pieces of the new land. Those who arrive first are often also those who were disillusioned elsewhere, or who never had much of a chance there to begin with. Those who come from poor countries or from countries with corrupt governments. Those who were pushed into a corner in wealthy countries—or born there already.

And the boundary between those doing business and those who are merely the objects of that business sometimes becomes blurry.

That is how new lands are settled: one hope after another.