According to a report by The New York Times on September 22nd, American techno-utopianists have been searching for locations around the world for years in order to build the future cities of their dreams. Now, they claim to have found a home in the riverine region of Uruguay for their project aimed at ‘revitalizing Western culture’.
Praxis CEO Duane Brown said in an interview: “The world tour is over: We chose Uruguay. This is the coolest thing ever.”
According to reports, Brown was a professional surfer. At the age of 23, he quit his last job and since then vowed to ‘establish a new civilization’. He has continuously drawn criticism and sparked controversy for advocating a strong, Western-centered social vision. Now, he plans to establish his base in another startup city, which is being built by an Argentine company in southern Uruguay.
The project is named +Colonia, led by entrepreneur Eduardo Bastita; Bastita was appointed as a consultant by Argentine President Julio Miel.
So far, Praxis has only signed a non-binding agreement with Bastita’s company. Whether the promise of building a city from scratch will actually materialize remains uncertain.
Brown plans to move to Uruguay as early as December, and he says it will be " wonderful". More members of his community are expected to move into the first buildings in Colonia next year. The New York Times wrote ironically: For a community that basically exists only online and gathers at parties in New York, this is already a significant step forward.
Brown said that during the pandemic, he began reading “that strange right-wing stuff on the internet,” and later started bringing “strange right-wing individuals from the internet to parties in New York.” According to Praxis’ website, this social circle eventually evolved into a digital community. Currently, the community claims to have over 2500 members who have promised to move to the new city.
According to its agreement in Uruguay, Praxis will begin purchasing land within the +Colonia project by the end of next year—a desolate area with sand dunes, located about an hour by ferry from Buenos Aires.
This new city’s future residents—Brown refers to them as “the most talented and insightful thinkers in the world”—will establish a new culture, economy, and governance system for the world after the age of artificial intelligence.
Brown said that this city will become a laboratory for ‘creating a new culture’, inspired by the aesthetics of classical Greece, Rome, and the Renaissance, as well as the virtues of truth, beauty, and heroism embodied by the Greek god Apollo.
It is reported that Brown’s plan is part of a widespread movement among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, aimed at creating tech-friendly hubs that operate like companies. The concept for this movement was inspired by the “Network State” idea, which was first proposed by Balaji Srinivasan, former chief technology officer of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.
Critics describe attempts to establish such countries as technological giants’ efforts to isolate society from the elite, or unrealistic fantasies. However, proponents argue that these could be crucial governance experiments that help “break down bureaucratic red tape and accelerate technological innovation”.
Praxis began fundraising in 2021. According to the venture capital tracking website Crunchbase, by 2023, it had received nearly $20 million from several companies, including Apollo Projects, the venture capital firm founded by OpenAI’s founder Sam Altman.
Brown said that Uruguay has an atmosphere similar to "Switzerland in South America," "great waves," and ample natural beauty, which is enough to attract creative professionals and technology executives who have lost their jobs due to "artificial intelligence taking away all jobs."
The description of Praxis as its future state seems to have been evolving over time. Its founder once defined it as a “cryptocurrency nation,” a society “composed of plump merchants, muscular warriors, and slender priests,” and an entity that requires a “special legal and regulatory environment.”
Now, Brown seems to have softened its promotional messaging, saying that this is a place with “awesome yoga” and “great DJs”. There, “people who are like friends of painters go there, and then they do things like hold exhibitions.”
Cornell University history professor Raymond Creble doubts this plan: "The Tech Utopia Initiative assumes that a new kind of nation can be created within its own encrypted world. But so far, the progress has not been particularly smooth." Speaking of Praxis, he said, "I can never tell whether this is meant to provoke critics, or if it really is meant to do so."
