I've read three books this week with some relevance to my goals. Blueprint for Paradise, which despite its name is a very practical guide to living on small tropical islands, How To Start Your Own Country, which, despite its title, seems mostly to be a chronicle of the many failures experienced by prospective nation founders, and The Last Frontiers On Earth, a more speculative book about the possible locations people can still go to find freedom.

The social and technical challenges involved in bringing civilization to a new frontier (antarctica, subarctic islands, underwater, on the water) fascinate me. There is some deep part of me that is unhappy with the specialization in todays society, the fact that there is always someone who can do things more expertly than I can. The result of this specialization is incredible efficiency, because when you have to do everything yourself you don't do any one thing as well as an expert. Yet it also results in a lack of customization, in looking around and feeling like everything you have was created by someone else. And perhaps (this is arguable), in a lack of innovation and experimentation, due to the separation between the creator and the end-user.

Part of me wants to stop thinking, talking, and researching, and just do. Move to another country, or buy a boat and see where the currents take me. Find a seamount and create land never seen before - open a bed-n-breakfast in the ocean. The rest of me, scared of thoughtless actions, urges restraint. Plan, wait, learn, don't be hasty. Get a group, have a plan, do things right. Torn by these conflicting urges, I feel unsure of my path. Is it a conflict between youth and maturity, haste and wisdom, or between creativity and stasis, real work and hot air? The books sketch a broad range of visions, from the disasters that were to the wonders that might yet be. Somewhere in between lies reality, where it can be hard to tell the impossible from the merely absurd.

Fuel for fantasy: Own your own submarine. Can't help but wonder how much money the owner of such a thing could make smuggling drugs :). I remember reading a news story about an unmanned submarine, stuffed full of dope, which washed up on the shore of mexico or california.

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