The Hive Before the Swarm

Ada Palmer built a twenty-fifth century where nationality is a subscription you choose rather than a border you're born inside — seven Hives, no more geography, membership renewable and revocable, loyalty a matter of philosophy rather than soil. In 2016 this read as an elegant thought experiment borrowed from Enlightenment cosmopolitanism, the kind of thing a historian of ideas would dream up between seminars. It reads differently now that "network state" has become a term venture capitalists use in pitch decks, now that people organize their politics, their friendships, even their currencies around ideological affiliation