🐦0ASIS

The network state

The 0ASIS — (Zero) Autonomous Spaces of the Imaginal State — is a pretentious name for a network state. Is the network state really the sequel to the nation state? Or is it just another narrative trying to sell us the same, tired tale of utopia? Is 0ASIS the fantastical third way, a coy attempt at dancing between two unsavoury extremes of capitalism and communism? Why pretend that we’re not spiralling towards a Second Cold War, this time not between the tired labels of communism and capitalism, but in a grand theater of centralisation versus decentralisation, degrowth and growth.

0ASIS is recentralisation. Sound like we’re walking in circles. But what if history isn’t circular but rather, helical? That we're not just revisiting original sins but maybe, just maybe, forging a new paradox. And if you needed a sign that this is indeed progress, well, one would expect a mass exodus of disillusioned human souls from both american anarchy and chinese control, flocking towards this orange middle — the 0ASIS. The first network state on Bitcoin.

The 0ASIS isn’t just a geopolitical manoeuvre, it appears not just as an historical moment, but also a psychosocial state or even existential condition. It promises to be a sanctuary for the human soul, a tangible taste of free freedom. The 0ASIS must exist in geographical odorous tactile tasty physical space (ranging in size from, say, a double bed to a large city) Because what's life without a dash of the existential. Dreams and blueprints are all well and good, but a life lived, breathed, and tasted rank above all. If you're courting the idea of making media your reality, then you’re bound to a life behind screens. But the 0ASIS wants to be immediate or nothing else.

And here's the promise of 0ASIS: guerilla insurrection, postcapitalism and a postlanguage era, a counter to the growing ills of genetic imperialism and corporate neocolonialism and the consequent radical wealth gap. The 0ASIS will take different forms in different places, avoiding big confrontations, using invisible tactics of resistance and opening up new kinds of Autonomous Spaces for the Imaginal State — or as we eloquently put it, the 0ASIS.

From the confines of the beeast's belly, it seems like the 0ASIS might just be the desperate last and only means of creating an outside — a true space of resistance to the totality. Delusional? Absolutely. But can we truly craft our own narrative? Or are we just chasing mirages in a desert of desolation? And if we're dreaming, why not dream big? A whole coun­try transformed into an 0ASIS. Can we evade or even oppose the closure of the map and learn to create our own outside?