If you really, really, really love the ocean, some of the world's best and brightest minds are working on a project that could create your dream home.  The Seasteading Institute, founded by Google's Patri Friedman and a former Sun Microsystems programmer named Wayne Gramlich, is investigating the idea of building entire communities in the ocean.  People will work, live, play and govern themselves in what are essentially "city-states" located, in, under and on the sea.

It may sound like something out of a science-fiction movie, but the Institute is serious.  They've already secured $500,000 in funding from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, and plan to break ground – or water – on a prototype to be launched within a few years in San Francisco Bay.  The structure is based on the design used in oil rigs – which are often small floating cities in their own right – but with gardens, solar panels and wind turbines added to the above-ground platform space to make the "city" sustainable and pleasant to live in.  The living room space, meanwhile, will be located inside the underwater tube that will anchor the platform to the ocean floor.  Which means your ocean view will be a real ocean view – no sky, no sand, only water.  It sounds like a perfect pad for a mermaid.