The Technate of America
A scroll-driven walkthrough of Technocracy Inc.'s plan for North America, 1933 to the 1940s: income paid in energy, the Technate drawn from Greenland to Venezuela, the grey motorcades, energy certificates and the Continental Hydrology scheme.
Technocracy Inc. · New York · 1933
The Technate of America
1933
The Technocrats' Magazine promised "$20,000 a year income for every family", paid in energy rather than money.1940
Technocracy Inc. drew the Technate of America: one block from Greenland to Venezuela, borders erased. Howard Scott spoke of acquiring it "by purchase, negotiation, or the force of arms".1940s
Members wore grey and drove grey cars in long motorcades. A visitor to Vancouver in 1947 counted "150 cars in line all same color".
Technocrats with a sound car, late 1940s. Colour slide, photographer unknown, via the Technocracy Technate Picture Archive. Reproduced for criticism and review. The certificate
Income would come as energy certificates that "cannot be saved" and lose their validity at the end of each period. Nobody could hoard, because nothing kept.Continental Hydrology
The engineers would replumb the continent too: rivers joined by canals into one shipping network, "dams high enough to reverse the flow of rivers", and a lake in northern Ontario "as large as Lake Superior". Hydroelectric dams, Technocracy Inc. promised, caused "only minor ecological readjustments".Engineers, attention
An Engineering Corps would build it all, "unhampered by business or political interferences"; anyone who doubted it was "socially uninformed". Parts did get built. Quebec diverted whole rivers into its James Bay dams, but only after the Cree and Inuit took it to court and forced a settlement.
To present it, press the full-screen button in its corner, then step through with the arrow keys or a clicker. Esc leaves.
Reuse and citation
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, with credit. Archival photographs are credited where they appear and keep their own terms.
Liam Wilkinson, “The Technate of America”, interactive, lwilko.com, 2026. https://www.lwilko.com/library/interactives/technate-of-america
A canvas model of the Technate of America as Technocracy Inc. drew it, covering income paid in energy, the movement's grey motorcades, energy certificates that could not be saved, and the plan to join the continent's rivers into one network. The archival photograph shown in the explainer is third-party material and keeps its own terms.
In the essays
- Neo-Technocracy: Same Dream, Bigger Budget
Read the essay
Sources
- A Continental Hydrology
Source
- The Energy Certificate
Source
People
- Howard Scott
Depicts
Ideas
Organisations
- Technocracy Inc.
Depicts
Record history
Catalogue source: knowledge/interactives/technate-of-america.md
Generated by claude-code/claude-opus-5-5 on 2026-10-24