Randa Abdel-Fattah

About corrupt leaders, absurd laws, and the enclosure system, in which so-called landlords fence off lands belonging to villagers, turning them into their personal fiefdoms, all for the sake of profit.

What a contrast to the island of Utopia, he reminisces.

Gold is used for chamber pots.

Private property isn't a thing.

Everyone wears the exact same colorless clothes and works six-hour days.

And all movement is perfectly regulated.

The author of this book, Thomas More, invented the word utopia.

It's a Greek pun combining utopos, no place, and utopos, good place.

It asks, in a tongue-in-cheek way, is a perfect society possible?

Or is the fantasy just a mirror held up to reality and a chance to change it?

Over the last few decades, the tech sphere has thrived on the urge to optimize everything, including utopia.

If we can just solve for X here and invent for Y there, we can build the perfect society.

Perfect for who?

That's a different story.

From private cities.

To interstellar colonies.

Tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have backed experiments designed to operate beyond the borders and laws most of us live by.

So we were curious, has anyone tried it?

Has this fantasy of exit, of opting out of the rules and building a new world, been put to the test?

I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah.