It sounds almost cliché, but the Westphalian nation-state model we've been under since 1648 is obsolete now. Networks of individuals themselves, regardless of their geographic location, can attain the sovereignty that heretofore has been limited to nation-states. Like tribes in cyberspace, where each individual person is a node in the network.
That doesn't mean political models like "The United States" or "France" will disappear. But I think we'll soon recognize the distinction between government and governance, between nation and nation-state, and so on.
It's rather difficult to predict the full ramifications of this, for the same reason someone in 1023 didn't yet realize what "The Middle Ages" would become.
It sounds almost cliché, but the Westphalian nation-state model we've been under since 1648 is obsolete now. Networks of individuals themselves, regardless of their geographic location, can attain the sovereignty that heretofore has been limited to nation-states. Like tribes in cyberspace, where each individual person is a node in the network.
That doesn't mean political models like "The United States" or "France" will disappear. But I think we'll soon recognize the distinction between government and governance, between nation and nation-state, and so on.
It's rather difficult to predict the full ramifications of this, for the same reason someone in 1023 didn't yet realize what "The Middle Ages" would become.