In 1970, the economist Albert Hirschman described two ways people respond when an institution fails them: they can leave, or they can stay and push for change. He called these exit and voice. Over the following half century, a loose network of philosophers, technologists, and investors carried the idea of exit well beyond anything Hirschman described, into floating cities, charter zones, private governments, online nations, and the merging of humans with machines. This chart traces that lineage from 1942 to 2026, showing who drew on whose ideas, who funded whom, and who worked alongside whom.
