Hello! WAMOTOPIA 2023
WAMO: A Summer Dream of Dali
In August 2022, a group of Web3 enthusiasts and community members, driven by principles of positive externalities, openness, mutual benefit, and open-source, initiated the "Summer of Wamo | Dali Web3 Summer Fest" in Dali. This event, fueled by a passion for technology, a quest for governance and self-organization in DAOs, reflections on public goods, and visions for community living and the future, planted a seed in Dali. Now, we're set to launch Wamotopia in Chiang Mai, a gateway to a new world.
The Summer of Wamo has since become a shared memory and a unique cultural phenomenon among Chinese-speaking Web3 enthusiasts. This decentralized, permissionless collaboration born from collective effort redefined the Chinese-speaking Web3 culture, fostering public goods and DAO organizations characterized by positive. As this seed was sown in Dali, some participants chose to stay and continue this decentralized emergence. Today, Dali has transformed into the hub for Chinese-speaking Web3, DAO organizations, digital nomads, and community living. Its spirit, carried by participants, now thrives across the globe, transcending geographical and national boundaries.
Wamotopia: A Path Towards Future
The Summer of Wamo, an almost predestined creation, charted a new course woven from open-source, permissionless, decentralized collaboration, and spontaneous emergence, reminiscent of the avant-garde spirit of rock music – unconventional, unrestrained.
Now, this path unfolds from Dali. It migrates southward, across the Himalayas, burning the dream of Dali's summer into the fiery Southeast Asia. At the end of 2023, in the land of Chiang Mai, Wamotopia emerges from the collective dreams of Builders, Creators, Thinkers, Dreamers, taking shape in faint outlines.
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality” — John Lennon
From December 16, 2023, to January 1, 2024, over 17 days, participants of Wamotopia – the Wamians – will carry their aspirations, explorations, and actions for the future world. Together, they will envisage the future, celebrate the new year, and co-create theme camps, building prototypes of our imagination and actions for the future. Wamotopia continues the legacy of the Summer of Wamo with theme camps, decentralized, permissionless engagement, community participation, freedom, and openness. It introduces the concept of a "Prototype Society," bringing the idea of "prototypes" from product and engineering into the social realm, constructing preliminary, demonstrable models for the future.
Wamotopia is a testing ground for Prototype Society. Each gathering of Wamians could be the start of incubating a prototype society. Our era demands coordinated efforts to confront systemic societal issues, creating new mechanisms and solutions. Due to the complexity of societal systems, it's challenging to derive a universal consensus from a theoretical model. Blind faith in a vision can also lead to disastrous outcomes. Like modern science and engineering achievements, social systemic changes require experimentation, iteration, and optimization after initial prototype feasibility, gradually gaining broader acceptance.
Wamotopia aims to create a space detached from traditional societal structures, where we can temporarily step away from the old world's Matrix, collectively imagining and shaping mechanisms, narratives, arts, technologies, and cultures of a future society. All Wamians will partake in molding the prototype society of the future. Participants can freely initiate or join any theme camp, with each camp embodying different thoughts and imaginations, intersecting and piecing together. In this process, mechanisms, cultures, technologies, and consensuses will gradually take shape through testing and verification, leaving seeds of the future – seeds that will sprout, grow, and become part of our future.
Why Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai, standing tall in the highlands of Southeast Asia, is the world's Dali. It embodies people's longing for a free, relaxed life filled with poetic possibilities. Chiang Mai, like Dali, has a natural ecology, rich history, and culture. Its Old City and surrounding areas, spanning 1.5 square kilometers, are dotted with cafes, bars, and public spaces. Chiang Mai's low living costs and visa-free policies for many countries with a wide range of accommodations attract young people worldwide to live and form communities. Its temples, tropical jungles, and Buddhist culture imbue a pleasant, chill vibe. Open, relaxed, natural, and wild – these are the colors of Chiang Mai. In Chiang Mai, one can effortlessly nurture the wildest life and boldest imagination.
Wamotopia – a co-creation of a prototype society, a forthcoming urban festival akin to Burning Man, a vibrant, diverse, experimental public realm, a dream forged by a collective. Where else but Chiang Mai could be more fitting for this event?
Wamotopia Theme Camps
Wamotopia is a cultural emergence born from a shared creation of theme camps. Continuing the decentralized, permissionless organization style of the Summer of Wamo, theme camps and activities are spontaneously initiated by participants based on consensus. The Wamotopia preparation team will also provide infrastructure and public goods in the form of theme camps. Each camp will present a unique public space and vibe.
Wamians believe this free and open mode will spark the richest creativity, creating the best atmosphere and the most vibrant community. Theme camps serve as windows to the Wamotopia world, spaces for free expression, vision showcase, and connection building. These can be platforms to discuss future issues, display public goods creations, community playgrounds, hackathons, DAO community bases, Regeneration churches, concerts, art installations, workshops, or even ice cream trucks giving out free treats. These expressions and creations are not just future aspirations but the minimum viable practices transforming aspirations into reality.
🎶 We encourage self-expression, with each theme camp serving as an arena for building your own reality.
✨ You can set up your camp anywhere. Every corner cafe, bar, and art shop, public space, even your own living room or a hotel room in Chiang Mai can become a unique theme camp.
🎶 Each theme camp is named and designed by its co-creators, with its theme and activities.
✨ Wamotopia will release a theme camp co-building manual, encouraging individuals or communities to join as co-builders
Humanistic Futurism of Wamo
Wamotopia is a humanistic futurism practice about the future, allowing Web3 to emerge into a broader exploration of social value and meaning. Geeks, Web3 practitioners, AI scientists, artists, creators, sociologists... Idealistic doers from diverse backgrounds gather here, designing various modules to construct the prototype of an ideal future society.
As a gateway to the future world and a nautical chart to a new land, Web3 is showing a new narrative and form of social organization. Now, let's imagine the future together. In this convergence of humanities, technology, and art, people can break free from default assumptions about how the world should operate, combining elements like Lego blocks in the wilderness of a new world, creating scenarios filled with infinite possibilities.
AI Alignment, exploration of future economic and social organization, positive externalities, collaborative cooperation, ReFi, Regenerative culture, Metacrisis, Slaying Moloch, public goods... Web3 and AI technology, in collaboration with other disciplines, will build a more inclusive and sustainable society in an open, collaborative, decentralized manner.
Exploration at the crossroads of human history
Wamotopia is a grand gathering at a unique crossroads in human history, where fellow travelers unite under the principle of positive externalities, exploring and seeking answers together.
Humanity is at a turning point. Frontier technologies like AI and Web3 have shown the possibility of making our society with greater freedom, openness, and a laid-back atmosphere. However, coordination failures, ecological issues, and AI safety challenges also cast an unknown shadow over the future. The future history of Earth is in our hands, in this critical moment of decision-making: what kind of world shall we create with our technology and intellect? Hence, we gather together, issuing a grand call to deliberate whether to turn left or right, how to strive to make the world a better place.
How do we use and develop new technologies, narrative techniques, and social structures to shape a better collective future? How do we create the most creative and imaginative community spaces? What kind of environment, spatial design, and artistic creation can make our lives more fulfilling and happy? How do we effectively collaborate while adapting to the current era? In this co-creation process, we will jointly undertake a profound exploration of the future world, weaving a spectacular emergence, a prototype society of the future.
A New Year's Celebration
At the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2024, countless fireworks will bloom over Chiang Mai, as people from the old world and Wamians gather to celebrate this significant ceremony of transitioning from the past to the future, participating and entering a new world.
Whether at a workshop, at a corner, at a barbecue party, or at an outdoor market, there's a chance to unexpectedly meet new people and forge new friendships, contributing to the magnificence of this collective dream. Standing at the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, let's carry our reflections and imaginations, walking towards a better future.
WAMO is CC0
Wamotopia will be CC0 licensed. This article and all co-created content by us will be released under CC0. This means that anyone can freely remix, distribute, and transmit these contents and ideas based on their understanding, without permission or payment. Feel free to fork, create your own version and share it with the world.
CC0:https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/
How to join us
Builders, creators, thinkers, dreamers, communities, regenerative advocates, and pioneers, it’s time to come together for a brighter future.
We seek support and collaboration to envision and construct an unparalleled carnival. If you resonate with the Wamo consensus and are enthusiastic about building a prototype society, then join us:
If you want to stay informed and participate in offline activities in Wamotopia, visit our public homepage @website/notion.site or website https://www.wamotopia.love/ for timely information.
If you are interested in decentralized collaboration, co-creation, and the infrastructure work of Wamotopia, and want to volunteer, please fill out the volunteer form. We will contact you within three working days: https://tally.so/r/wo2eWV
If you plan to start a theme camp or wish to participate in the co-construction of a theme camp, please fill out the form https://tally.so/r/mBxK7N
We warmly welcome donations. If you would love to donate to us, please fill out the form https://tally.so/r/3xJj9k
( This Womatopia document is 0.7 Version )
Wamo Culture
Why is Summer of Wamo So Special?
As a large-scale decentralized experiment, Summer of Wamo created a decentralized city of creativity without boundaries, demonstrating the possibility of decentralized consensus as a powerful tool for creating collective action and establishing culture. Under appropriate principles and conditions, every individual can join the exploration and action towards a common future direction without permission, thus collectively creating culture through emergence.
This experimental exploration of collaboration, mutual trust, and co-creation under the spirit of self-organization has enabled like-minded fellows to find each other, inspire each other, and act in concert, while fully preserving the freedom of self-expression, resulting in a plethora of creative ideas and actions. Through narrative, consensus is formed among participants, leading to actions that resonate with collective purpose. We have found a path to generate large-scale decentralized social coordination under the premises of open source, openness, no permission, and no central authority.
The experience of Summer of Wamo has given us and the world the understanding and practice of creating this kind of replicable emergence, which has the potential to sculpt a future that's not just better, but extraordinary.
Like my work? Don't forget to support and clap, let me know that you are with me on the road of creation. Keep this enthusiasm together!
- Author