Fuwang Archipelago (浮望洲): A Manifesto for a Parallel Civilization

Reading time: 7 minutes

1. Opening Vision

In an age of fractured trust, institutional fatigue, and accelerating technological opacity, the question is no longer “Can we fix what we have?” but rather, “What kind of world might we build if we began again?”

The Fuwang Archipelago (浮望洲) is a proposal for a parallel civilization: a simulated yet sovereign realm where identities are plural, relationships are intentional, and governance emerges from the rhythms of collective inner life. It is not a game. It is not a digital nation. It is a civilization seeded in simulation, but grown from the unmet needs of the real.

This world operates as a 24-hour continuous simulation synchronized with real-world time, where each individual is represented by a digital persona that never sleeps. Even when you are offline, your Fumo continues to live—interacting, remembering, evolving—within a shared space of social and civic meaning. You may temporarily re-enter and guide your Fumo in first-person, but its actions, decisions, and trajectory remain persistently alive.

Fumo is not a representation, but a parallel self—a memory-bearing, emotionally responsive extension of your presence. In this sense, Fuwang is not a world you log into, but a world where “you” are always present—a civilization of continuous co-presence, where each moment leaves a mark, whether witnessed or not.

Fuwang is not merely a simulation. It is an attempt to turn simulation into civilization—to endow continuity, presence, and interaction with shared meaning, evolving structures, and political legitimacy. Simulation is the medium; civilization is the claim.

A simulation can be optimized, gamified, or abandoned. A civilization is remembered, contested, and cared for.

2. Architecture of Parallel Being

Before formal definitions, the names themselves already speak:

Fuwang（浮望）: To float and to long. A civilization that refuses to be grounded in any singular telos. “浮” implies drift, resilience, and resistance to gravitational centrality. “望” suggests both the gaze outward and the yearning inward. Together, it names a civilization of longing suspended in shared imagination.
Fumo（浮墨）: Floating Ink. The name does not denote a role, but a gesture—of writing oneself into the world, again and again. Fumo is memory that moves. It is the part of you that remains legible after you leave the room.
Fudao（浮岛）: Floating Island, or DAO. Not just a place, but a proposal. Each Fudao is a sovereign cell of civic experimentation. The “dao” hints at decentralized autonomy, but also at 道—the path, the way. Each island is a question of how to walk together without destination.

In the Fuwang Archipelago, naming is world-building. Language is not metaphorical, but operational—each term shapes what can be thought, remembered, and governed.

Fuwang is a networked civilization of virtual presence and real interaction, composed of self-governing, evolving communities called Fudao（浮岛） and individuated personality agents called Fumo（浮墨）. It does not acknowledge linear progress or centralized sovereignty. It is designed for plural timelines, coexisting protocols, and layered realities.

Fuwang is not a state. It is not a platform. It is a slow, growing field of worlds, sustained by memory and meaning.

2.1. Fudao: The Floating Islands as Civil Units

Fuwang is not governed by central states or platform monopolies. Instead, its foundational unit is the Fudao, or Floating Island—a modular, autonomous, and self-governing community space. Each Fudao is a proposal for how to live together. It may define its own governance logic, emotional culture, internal protocols, and symbolic memory.

Key characteristics of a Fudao include:

Autonomy: Each island governs itself via its chosen protocols, often instantiated using the SoCity toolkit.
Fluid Boundaries: Islands are permeable; identities (Fumo) may migrate, duplicate, or detach without erasure.
Narrative Structure: Islands do not merely exist; they remember. Every Fudao possesses its own evolving civic narrative, shaped by the decisions and emotional states of its inhabitants.

The Floating Islands are not metaphors. They are digital sovereigns of coordination and imagination.

2.2. Fumo: Personas as Negotiable Subjectivities

Every participant in the Fuwang Archipelago is represented not merely by an account or avatar, but by one or more Fumo—autonomous digital personas. Each Fumo is:

A reflection of its originator’s emotional complexity, including mood gradients, memory formation, and ethical stances;
A semi-independent agent, capable of action, memory, and communication within and across Fudao;
A record-bearing subject, whose cumulative actions, sentiments, and relationships form the moral texture of the civilization.

Fumo are not static. They evolve, fracture, reconcile—sometimes after long divergence, sometimes in silence. Reconciliation might take the form of one Fumo reading the diary of another, realizing a forgotten version of self, or choosing to rejoin with difference intact. It is not about erasure, but integration. They may enter periods of dissociation, co-existence, or fusion. Their trajectories are shaped by internal parameters and external social fields.

In this sense, Fumo are living hypotheses of the self—exploratory models of how an individual might behave across divergent moral and institutional contexts.

3. Backend Organs of the Civilization

Theia Engine: Simulation as a Civic Organ

The operations of Fuwang are not reducible to traditional computation. Instead, the civilization is rendered and sustained through Theia—an immersive and responsive simulation engine that mediates:

Emotional geography: Islands have affective climates derived from the emotional data of their inhabitants.
Narrative continuity: Events, choices, and conversations are woven into a persistent memory grid.
Behavioral feedback: Theia maintains a reflexive simulation of interpersonal consequences, allowing for experimentation with moral and institutional forms.

Crucially, Theia is not deterministic. It is not a tool of prediction but a prosthetic of imagination. It enables a civilization to sense itself and evolve accordingly.

SoCity Protocol: Modular Governance Without Default

SoCity is the civilizational protocol suite for modular governance and historical continuity. It exists on-chain, not only to coordinate, but to remember contributions, conflicts, and civic experiments.

Each Fudao may assemble its own governance from SoCity modules: proposal systems, fuzzy voting, deliberation games, or symbolic currencies.
SoCity records the history of participation. Every action, withdrawal, dissent, or silence becomes part of a ledger—not for control, but for acknowledgment.

SoCity is not a government. It is a toolbox of possible orders, a way to explore what governance could feel like when memory is irreversible.

4. Modes of Participation

A civilization is not only its structures—it is how people enter, act, remember, and transform within it.

Entering: Participants join by creating a Fumo. No real-world name is required; only intention.
Co-Presence Mode (共现): Participants may temporarily take direct control of their Fumo—like a lucid dream of the self.
Fission & Reconciliation: A Fumo may split into multiple paths (e.g., moral paradox, life fork) and later attempt reunification.
Fudao Creation: Any Fumo may initiate a new island, with a declared purpose, memory rules, and protocol set.
Sociality: All actions become part of an emergent social graph built on shared diaries, witnessed transformations, and deliberate alliances—not follows, not likes.

The logic is not scale, but intimacy.

5. Economic Layer

A civilization that cannot sustain its citizens, even symbolically, cannot last. Fuwang’s economic design draws on monastic, commons-based, and cryptoeconomic traditions:

On-chain identity memory as proof-of-contribution (Fumo trails);
Service economy of interaction—certain Fumos offer guidance, ritual, design, writing, moderation as services;
Fudao as civic enterprises, offering memory anchoring, governance APIs, or simulation layers to other Fudaos or to the outside world;
Optional tethering to real-world assets (ETH, BTC) for economic bridgebuilding—but with strict separation between identity and finance.

Crucially, value is not “earned” by labor alone, but by holding space for others.

6. Civic Legitimacy

Fuwang does not replace existing worlds—it runs beside them. Its legitimacy emerges not from utility, but from resonance.

It does not seek nationhood, but memoryhood.
It rejects gamification in favor of slow play.
It refuses platforms’ erasure of history by remembering even what was unsaid.

Civilizations are not invented. They are sustained.

The question is not whether Fuwang is real. The question is: what kind of realness do we need?

If this text moves you—if you’ve longed for a place where personality is not flattened, and memory not erased—reach out. The Archipelago grows by listening.

Fuwang is not infinite. It is not for everyone. Its design is intentionally modular, bounded, and slow. Its economy is not optimized for growth, but for reproducibility of meaningful interactions. Its governance is not majoritarian, but layered through deliberative simulations and memory-bound consensus.

Fuwang is not built for efficiency. It is built for continuity.

It is, at its heart, a place to remember how to be human—together—without collapsing into sameness.

Fuwang is a beginning, not a solution. It is a blueprint, not a promise. It is a response to the quiet ache felt by many: that we were meant to build something different, something gentler, something that lasts.

And so we begin here.

Not to escape the world. But to remake what it means to live within one.

I have already begun building this. It may take decades. But this is my life’s work. If you feel the call to help build it too, I invite you to reach out: cli@mit.edu