#facestate

Designstudio Metahaven also presented a project at the before mentioned Facing Forward - Future's Future event.

According to Metahaven the ultimate combination of social media and government would be 'Facestate'. They build a whole installation around this concept of Facestate to make people more aware of where the idea of large-scale online social networks under centralized control might be heading.

As Metahaven states in an interview:

"Facebook now has so many users, that if it were to be a country, its number of inhabitants would only be second to India and China. There is an incredible, almost eerie power in Facebook’s brand as a kind of new neutrality, a new standard. It is almost a second coming of the Swiss or International Style."

Also inspired by the idea of an ultraminimal state (as described in the 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia of Robert Nozick) Metahaven designed concrete objects and interfaces that show the way the constellation of Facestate might influence politics, currency and the social contract. These are shown above and here.