The term "lunarpunk" has been used as a specific subset/addition/clarification to solarpunk. It envisions the same sustainable, human-centric future based on technological development with an emphasis on the need for "defensive technologies," especially strong cryptography, and pragmatic caution. For this reason it could be considered "defensive accelerationism". Lunarpunk takes the imagined solarpunk world and adds some specific qualifications that are intended to ground the philosophy in a more defensive/offensive mindset.
In addition to the solarpunk ideals, lunarpunk emphasizes:
- Decentralization is not just a more local approach to community infrastructure, it is fundamental.
- While solarpunk is not collectivist to the detriment of the individual, lunarpunk makes this qualification explicit. Individual agency and liberty is paramount.
- To this end, individual privacy is lunarpunk requisite, and programmable cryptography is as fundamental as ecologically responsible technologies.
- Privacy for individuals, transparency for power structures.
- While lunarpunk believes a much better civilization is possible, it points out that a better future is in no way inevitable and requires extensive effort to build toward.
- Lunarpunk also emphasizes the many risks between us and the future we want, many of them existential, such as climate change, political disfunction, global pandemics, AI, and unknown unknowns.
One could imagine solarpunk as the utopian end goal, and lunarpunk as the pragmatism required to get there. Solarpunk x Cypherpunk = Lunarpunk, where Solarpunk is techno-optimistic and Cypherpunk is techno-realistic/pessimistic.
- A thorough description of lunarpunk in relation to solarpunk.