The Libertarian's Saga:Tracing the cultural roots of ideology in EVE Online

John Carter McKnightArizona State University

@john_carter

facebook – eve online (albums) (csm7 propaganda)

a puzzle

second life

• launched 2003• carefully managed real-money economy• about 50,000 concurrent users• community-driven “sandbox”• global user base• terrible UI and social tools• programmer-driven corporate culture• growing rift between designers and users

eve online

• launched 2003• carefully managed real-money economy• about 30,000 concurrent users• community-driven “sandbox”• global user base• terrible UI and social tools• programmer-driven corporate culture• growing rift between designers and users

in california

• Ayn Rand + hippie culture + engineering culture + 1980s-1990s cyberpunk

• generally idealistic

“the californian ideology”

• Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture

• Barbrook & Cameron essayhttp://www.imaginaryfutures.net/

2007/04/17/the- californian-ideology-2/

recipe

• “a mix of cybernetics, free market economics, and counter-culture libertarianism”

- barbrook & cameronhttp://www.arpnet.it/chaos/

barbrook.htm

in iceland

the californian ideology

+ the sagas

+ globalization

more nihilistic

• government a matter of feudal contract between lord and producers

• lords not territorially based but a shifting assemblage of personal contracts

• *not* responsible for punishment or enforcement – those are private matters

• blood feud and shifting alliances based on zero-sum resource competition

feud is• moral: punishes breach of social norms• executive power of a polity w/o central

authority• political: arena where competition is played

out• common model of politics in egalitarian

societies

“In Iceland, the violence of the law was not something removed from the general populace. There were no state apparatus to pretend to monopolize the legitimate use of force…. It was up to free adult males to do the work of law”

Miller, 232

david friedman – silicon valley scholar of icelandic law

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html

mid-2000’s – iceland’s 60’s and 90’s

“the sagas matter not just because all Icelandic children grow up with them. They form part of the vocabulary, part of the thought pattern, of young men as soon as they start thinking about power”

Boyes, Meltdown Iceland, 60

“the new vikings”

techno-financial emergent elitedefined against the traditional egalitarianism of their parents’ generationuse tradition to return to open power competition

“roadkill in global competition” – lost the game as it became zero-sum

demographics

• sl as the last expression of the techno-hippie demographic (california 1998)

• eve as the first expression of young bitter anarcho-capitalists (iceland 2008)

• sl – how 50-somethings wish the world was“your world, your imagination”

• eve – how 20-somethings believe the world is“space makes you bitter”

“yummy tears”

“A year in EVE will teach you more about human nature than a decade in any other MMO, but what you learn may scar you.”

http://tentonhammer.com/eve/spymaster/65

john.mcknight@asu.edujohncartermcknight.com@john_carter