Finding your people online what the idea of network communities teaches me

How I found out

Usually you don't choose your neighbors. You live next to whoever happens to be nearby: because of where you were born, where you work, what rent you can afford. If you're lucky, some of them turn out to be people you share a path with. If not, "your people" stay in your messages, in another time zone.

For a long time I took this as a given. Then I heard a story that shifted it. It wasn't told by journalists but by people who are in touch with Balaji Srinivasan, an American entrepreneur and investor, and know his project from the inside.

The project is called Network School. In 2024 it opened in Forest City, in the south of Malaysia Source 2. People from different countries gathered there, many of whom had previously known each other only online. They lived side by side, worked in a shared space, studied, exercised and launched their own projects.

Later the project moved to a different location. But what caught my attention wasn't the place, it was the sequence of events. People scattered around the world found each other online, came to an agreement and gathered at a specific point on the map.

For me it was practical proof: this can be done, and already now. I wanted to understand what idea it rests on.

The idea in a nutshell

In 2022 Srinivasan published a book called "The Network State" Source 1. It's available for free at thenetworkstate.com, and the key term is right there in the title.

Put very simply, the path looks like this. First, people find each other online around a shared mission, meaning a cause that makes them want to come together. Then they learn to reach agreements and do things together: projects, meetups, shared rules. And when there's enough trust, they start meeting in person, renting housing together, working side by side.

Imagine a book club that has met over video calls for years. One day its members decide to rent a big house for a month and live there together. Then again, for longer. Then they look for a place they can come to permanently. It's a very rough model, but it captures the essence: first something in common, then a common address.

What interests me is the beginning of the path: how people find each other and how they reach agreements. From here on, I'll simply talk about network communities.

What struck me most is that the whole thing is built on voluntariness. No one is pulled in by force or held back. People decide for themselves whom to join and when to leave. And what unites them isn't language or place of birth but a shared mission and technologies that help them stay connected.

To be honest, I had been thinking about voluntariness before I opened the book. So reading it felt more like recognition. I saw my own thoughts, only gathered by someone else and described from different angles. It's a strange and pleasant feeling: it turns out you're not thinking alone.

What you can do right now

You don't have to wait for a settlement of thousands. For a small group, this idea makes sense already today.

Technically, everything has become easier. With language models, building an online system for your circle is now a matter of days, not months: a website, a shared knowledge base, a bot that reminds people of agreements. The difficulty has shifted. The main question now isn't "how do we build it" but "how should it work."

When I think about this for myself and the people I'm in touch with, my mind looks for one thing: how to make coordination effortless. So that sharing news, joint projects, finding a place to live together all happen on their own, not through dozens of messages.

Right now we still live on old models. Messengers and email were designed for a conversation between two people or for mass mailings. For a circle of people doing something together, they're inconvenient. Important things drown in the flow, decisions get lost, a newcomer can't figure out what has already been discussed. Everyone keeps the overall picture in their own head, and that's exhausting.

I think the more we use new tools, the sooner convenient solutions will appear. I'm working on this together with several people from my circle. And the further I go, the more clearly I see: the hardest part here isn't the code but the agreements. How to make decisions, how to pass on knowledge, how to tell whether this place suits a person.

How to show your values

There's a question that comes up before any code. How can an outsider tell whether this circle suits them?

In ordinary life, people's values aren't visible right away. You infer them from actions, sometimes over years. For a circle that comes together online, that won't do: a person needs to understand what they're joining before the first meeting. So values need to be described clearly and openly, so that anyone can read them and decide for themselves: "this is for me" or "this isn't for me."

Let me start with myself. Here's what matters to me.

Non-aggression. I don't use force, pressure or threats against others, and I expect the same from them. Everything else is open for discussion.

Self-ownership. In plain words: every person is in charge of themselves, their body and their time. No one decides for you how to live, what to do and whom to be friends with, as long as you don't harm anyone.

Improving the environment. I'm interested in people who leave the place where they live and work better than it was. Cleaner, more convenient, friendlier.

Voluntariness. Joining the circle and leaving it are both free. Participation is a choice, not an obligation.

These are my personal values. I'm not proposing them as rules for everyone. They're meant for a voluntary circle of people who relate to them. And such a circle, wherever it gathers, lives by the laws of the place where it is. Agreements between participants are added on top of those laws, not in place of them.

I think a clear description of values saves everyone time. Someone to whom they feel foreign will simply pass by, and no one will be disappointed. And someone who shares them will recognize their people from the first paragraph.

My blind spots

Now about what I don't know. And there's a lot I don't know.

The idea is new, there's little practice, and almost everything I think about it right now is reasoning. I don't want to fill the gaps with guesses. A beautiful scheme on paper always looks smooth until you try it.

So I intend to test it all myself. I plan to move to one of these communities for a while and live there. I want to see how the idea works in a group larger than the one I'm used to. What problems come up, where agreements don't fit real life. And which of these problems I could solve as a developer, so that circles like this find it easier to grow.

Where exactly that will be, I'll tell you when there's something to tell.

Questions I'm looking to answer

I don't have a ready-made critique of this idea. I have questions I'm taking with me and want to check against lived experience.

Won't the circle turn into a closed club? When people are closely aligned in their views, it's easy to start looking down on everyone else. I think this is the main risk of any values-based group, and I want to see how people avoid it in practice.

How do you stay open to new people? Any circle ages along with its founders if it doesn't let new people in. But if you let everyone in indiscriminately, the values get diluted. Where the balance lies, I don't know yet.

How do you avoid losing touch with the world around you? People don't live in a vacuum. Around them are neighbors, a city, the laws of the country. A circle that closes in on itself and forgets that it's part of a larger world doesn't interest me. What interests me is how people with shared values become good neighbors to everyone else.

Perhaps some of these questions already have answers, and I just haven't seen them yet. All the better.

1. 1

   People who knew each other only online are already coming together and living side by side.

2. 2

   At the core of the idea is voluntariness: people are united by a shared mission, not by place of birth.

3. 3

   Building an online system for your circle has become easy; designing the agreements is the hard part.

4. 4

   Values are worth describing openly, so that anyone can decide for themselves whether a circle suits them.

5. 5

   I want to clear up my blind spots through lived experience, not guesses.

Who I'm looking for

I think this idea is worth developing. The more people learn that gathering around shared values is realistic, the easier it will be for like-minded people in different corners of the planet to find each other.

I explored a similar theme, only on the scale of a single house, in A Home Where It's Safe to Tell the Truth. It's about how an agreement not to attack each other changes life under one roof.

I'm interested in people who are already thinking about the kind of environment they want to live in. Who relate to non-aggression, self-ownership and voluntariness. Who know how to reach agreements and keep them. And who don't believe that "people will always be people" is a final verdict.

If that's you, subscribe: I'll share what I see and what I learn. And if you already live in such a circle or are thinking about one, let's get to know each other. I'd genuinely like to compare notes.