Neocities.org

re:frontiers, i'm not sure they're as absolute as you're saying. frontiers are created all the time. a lot of the barriers to new things are rules established players with money and power set to protect themselves (as you observed). but sometimes external factors result in those players' interests all aligning at once towards removing barriers and giving money to anyone promising, which opens new frontiers.

in the case of the new world, one of the parties that would normally defend its own interests was dead. which is probably a general pattern with both literal and metaphorical frontiers. there was a frontier for japanese electronic music in the 80s, which made a lot of music i love, but in that case it was the money people who suffered, so it was over in a few years.

I really need to start a section like this in my site

i was thinking pretty strongly in terms of physical frontiers for that one, if you want to create a new state it's just not possible. i forgot to add this but even the group of powerful silicon valley billionaires trying to start a new city in the barren inland area east of the bay area are getting stonewalled hard.

art is an interesting case because "new territory" can be created to some extent, e.g. when a new medium or style is invented. money can help but too much of it risks inflating a bubble or attracting parasites and grifters.

Sorry, I got confused by the Silicon Valley example (also I realize these are just notes, so I probably shouldn't be picking them apart). But with the new world, it was only "stateless" (obv modern concept of state didn't exist yet) because the people who lived there had been neutralized by disease. The frontier wasn’t just always there — it had to be created.

Sorry for writing so much, but one more thing I thought of is that frontiers still exist, or at least did up until recently. E.g. Xinjiang was something of a frontier for Han Chinese wanting to make money far away from home, and the repercussions of that are still very visible today.

All of this is making me think of the Nazi doctrine of “Living Space” (Lebensraum), if you haven’t heard of it before. It dreamt of creating a new frontier out of the populated space surrounding Germany. As an American, no one ever told me growing up that it was directly inspired by American manifest dynasty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum#Lebensraum_as_theory_in_Hitlerism

now i am thinking it is a shame nobody creates frontiers willingly/deliberately as a venue for social experimentation, it always seems to be by force or by accident. i wonder if it is even possible to "create" a frontier artificially...

What you wrote about Snoopy & Hello Kitty & lack of narratives is interesting, because I didn't really grow up with Snoopy at all. I began to like Snoopy somewhat recently in the same way I liked Hello Kitty & crew- a cute but blank character. I saw him as just a cute puppy for a while before actually reading any of the comics & thus giving Snoopy a narrative in my mind.

A really interesting read. I loved it

against all odds, the very first thing i did to try and fix it somehow worked