people have been exchanging goods and

ideas on a global scale for millennia

but in the past few decades since the

fall of the Berlin Wall the opening up

of capital markets the rise of

information technology and the reduction

in trade tariffs the pace of global

connectivity has greatly increased as

many countries and people have entered

into a single global economy of exchange

although the initial phases of economic

globalization may be behind us today

soaring flows of cross-border data

channeled through the internet are

taking globalization to new levels today

1 billion people are coming online every

five years as digital platforms are

coordinating evermore spheres of economy

and society the level of globalization

fostered by the information revolution

is altogether unprecedented in human

history as the speed with which

information transactions and capital can

travel virtually anywhere on the planet

enables the sustained coordination of

human activity at a new scale and level

of complexity this series of short films

documents this fast changing landscape

at the intersection of globalization and

the ongoing expansion of information

networks

global interconnectivity has expanded

and contracted many times throughout

history with the rise and fall of

Empires and their extended trading

routes

before the advent of industrial

technologies the capacity to maintain

some form of global relation was highly

costly and thus the privilege of a tiny

minority of any society the aristocratic

women of the Roman Empire could wear

fine silk garments imported from China

but the vast majority of people lived

out their lives interacting only with

their local social cultural and physical

environment tribes clans Lordships and

other forms of traditional society were

organized around a cosmos of local level

interactions and relations that defined

the limits to economic and political

organization for most of human history

with the advent of industrial

technologies such as the steam engine

and later the telephone and radio the

mass of society could communicate with

people and travel to places far from

their indigenous locality tapping into

the new energy sources of fossil fuels

enabled the sustained expansion in

physical connectivity beyond the local

the railroad was one of the truly

revolutionary elements of the industrial

revolution for not only did it create a

new economic dimension but also it

rapidly expanded the geographic

mentality of people for the first time

in history human beings had true

mobility over a large geographical area

beyond their local community for the

first time the horizons of ordinary

people expanded beyond the local and it

expanded out into a national system of

organization that formed over the coming

centuries
economic industrialization went hand in

hand with the rise of the modern

nation-state as transportation

technologies enabled people to

experience a wider geographic area as if

it was one national culture was fostered

and sustained through the newspaper

radio and later the television which

allowed a geographically dispersed

population to share their collective set

of ideas and experiences today the

modern nation-state is the primary

macroscale system of organization in the

world sovereign states are designed to

have supreme and independent authority

over a geographic area all organizations

on the regional and the international

level operate through or are regulated

by the legal machinery of the

nation-state the nation-state has come

to represent a whole world of cultural

social economic and technological

relations on a particular geographical

scale having proved to be the

fundamental institutional framework of

an industrial society but whereas the

industrial technologies of the railway

automobile radio and newspaper enabled

the modern state the advanced

technologies of information

communications and global transportation

are interconnecting people and places in

ways that go beyond the paradigm of the

nation

date

the global connections that these

technologies enable whether they are

airline routes the flow of financial

capital or supply chains they all start

local and travel globally with limited

reference to the national level

in parallel with this rise of

information technology was a changing

economic paradigm starting in the late

80s a new economic and political

ideology arose promoting the idea of the

free market both internal to the

nation-state through privatization and

external through the reduction in trade

barriers tariffs and other policies that

were designed to reduce the differences

between national jurisdictions and

enable a global free market the net

result of this coupled with new

technologies has been a mass increase in

global economic exchange and with this

increase in connectivity an increase in

global interdependence

networks of infrastructure of

telecommunication of data exchange of

migration of tourism of financial flows

are expanding out into a new global

sphere but the management of our world

has remained by and large structured

around the nation's state the result is

a growing chasm forming and ever-growing

sphere of activity within and between

societies that is unregulated a void

that becomes determined by powerful

market actors

as a consequence at the heart of this

evolution in human organization is the

question of how can we manage the global

economy how can we manage these global

networks in an effective fashion today

the case can be easily made that we have

not and are not capable of doing this

from financial crisis and offshore tax

havens to an incapacity to deal with

migration and refugees further

environmental challenges such as global

warming cross boundary water and air

pollution and overfishing of the ocean

are directly linked with lack of global

governance

to date neither markets nor public

institutions have proven effective at

delivering sustainable solutions to the

management of the global economy on its

different levels the Industrial Age

macroscale management structure of the

nation-state has not transformed to meet

the demands of an emerging set of global

networks that require a new form of

management structure that is today

significantly lacking and this has many

systemic detrimental effects

global institutions built on the

framework of the nation-state like the

World Bank WTO IMF and United Nations

although effective in some ways are

ultimately an incomplete solution to

global governance as they are piecemeal

undemocratic often ineffective and have

not created the desired results today

few people desire the formation of a

centralized global government that might

be able to manage the global Commons in

the same way that the nation-state did

for national economies while private

actors and markets have evolved into a

global structure such a system of

organization without regulation has

proved to create huge social and

environmental negative externalities

that are unsustainable in many ways the

form of globalization that we have

developed has turned out to be very

unsustainable while this global

interconnectivity is working to

disintegrate the social welfare state in

many ways it has not yet replaced it

with a viable model on the global level

while large sections of the global

economy are still in an industrial mode

of organization at the leading edge

networks are emerging as a new model for

organizing human activity without

dependence upon geographic boundaries

until very recently the only way to

achieve large-scale coordination was

through centralized closed organizations

but with information technology and

online platforms we now have the actual

means to create global scale

organizations capable of coordinating

resources and people at an unprecedented

scale

this changes the rules of the game and

the conditions for success have changed

as power is fast moving from people

within hierarchical positions to the

design of information networks every

horizontal connection made across the

borders of vertical organizations

reduces the resources flowing through

those structures we are going through a

massive wave of cross boundary

connectivity that is redirecting the

flow of resources both within societies

and between them the resources flowing

within vertical organizational

structures is diminishing at the same

time the challenge and complexity of the

environment they operate within is

increasing as more and more resources

are flowing through information based

networked organizations

this transfer of power from closed

organizations to global networks that is

taking place as we move from the

Industrial Age to the Information Age is

comparable only to the transfer of power

that occurred at the beginning of the

modern era from the church and landed

nobility to the capitalist classes

nation-state and bureaucratic

organizations in general a myriad of

overlapping and intersecting global

networks are becoming a new

organizational structure for Humanity in

the age of globalization networks of

trade of finance of air transport of

information of media are now starting to

link and coordinate human affairs in new

ways but this transition is far from

over and the outcomes remain hugely

undecided

at the heart of the process of

globalization is the rise of a new

organizational paradigm in the form of

the market system a new logic of

commercial exchange has expanded to

evermore spheres of human activity after

millennia of societies and economies

being governed primarily by people

making choices within a political

context today economies around the world

are less governed by the choices of

their political institutions and more by

the rules of economics markets and flows

of financial capital this truly radical

transfer of power and decision-making

has taken place within a few short

decades with far-reaching implications

more and more societies around the world

and more aspects of those societies

become opened up to being organized

through the logic of the market system

centuries-old established local ways of

doing things are becoming increasingly

organized via global networks of

economic exchange

since the origins of society people have

formed political institutions to make

collective decisions for their community

tribes chieftains states and empires

have been governed predominantly by a

small elite of people making collective

decisions about the ordering of their

societies and economies with these

political systems forming hierarchical

centralized structures based around a

common culture and confined within a

specific geographic boundary the modern

era saw the expansion of another major

modality for the coordination and

management of resources within society

the market system markets have always

been there but have traditionally

operated within the confines and

constraints of the cultural social and

political institutions of their society

typically in pre-modern societies most

of the resources produced are for direct

family consumption excess resources are

typically aggregated and controlled by

the ruling political authorities within

these societies markets play a

relatively limited role in terms of

decision making

one of the primary characteristics of

the modern era has been the rise of

capitalism and the market system

particularly since the Industrial

Revolution with urbanization mass

production and the specialization of

Labor the mass of people became

dependent on the capitalist market

system for their everyday livelihood in

a modern society the market system comes

to take on a new role instead of being a

means to an end that is controlled by

the political social and cultural elite

it becomes an end in itself and

increasingly liberated from

socio-political constraints as an ever

more important means for decision-making

in relation to the allocation of

resources the economy becomes the glue

that binds people together through their

interdependence on each other through

the process of industrialization it

becomes a major independent

organizational structure during this

process of industrialization it became

accepted that the market system needs

independence from socio cultural and

political control although this idea was

challenged during the 20th century by

centrally planned economies like the

USSR it eventually came to dominate

you

until the middle half of the 20th

century hierarchies were almost

unanimously seen as the only effective

method for organizing production within

large mass societies it was at this time

that a new ideology of the free market

as a distributed coordination mechanism

in its own right arose one can see the

early conceptual stages of this process

with the work of Friedrich Hayek Hayek

recognized that prices produced by

supply and demand alone could be an

accurate and sufficient signal of

information to allow decentralized

coordination to achieve the optimal

allocation of resources within society

although the state was still seen to be

needed for providing basic support Hayek

saw the market as an optimal

self-sustaining system and enabling it

required converting as much as possible

into private property and contracts that

would allow for those signals to order

economy spontaneously

the latter half of the 20th century saw

the realization of Hayek's ideas here in

the United States and in other developed

economies with the acceleration of a

process of transferring socio-economic

organization from hierarchical social

organization to market structures as

promoted by a new ideology of

neoliberalism in the 1970s 80s and 90s

public provisions started to retreat and

private production via the market

started to expand into almost all areas

the neoliberal paradigm is the logic of

the market system although originally it

may have been an economic theory

neoliberalism came to be much more than

this as it came to encompass a set of

ideas or paradigm about human nature

economic and social organization

neoliberalism is the free-market

ideology based on individual liberty and

limited government the connected human

freedom to the actions of the rational

self-interested actor in the competitive

marketplace

neoliberalism formed the conceptual

rationale for shifting economic

organization from people and hierarchies

toward an impersonal logic of the market

in order for it to achieve this it had

to remove power and capabilities from

the nation-state a battle was fought

during the latter half of the 20th

century for control over the state and

it was largely won by the proponents of

this new market based model

neoliberalism had a clear agenda to

shift power from democratic systems of

governance and move it into the market

this was done through two primary

vehicles one was privatization and

deregulation of national economies the

other method was the shifting of power

out of national democracies and their

Parliament's and into the executive in

international bodies that were not

controlled via democratic procedures

such as the IMF or WTO

as people became increasingly aware that

the political power to affect the things

that mattered in their lives was fast

slipping out of their hands civil

society started to react clashing with

the architects of this new global

economy the epicenter of which was here

in Seattle on November 30th 1999 where

massive street protests turned mounting

tensions into violent outbursts however

the battle was already over the days of

the National Democratic system

exercising independent power were coming

to a close as all were becoming

interdependent in a new market system

that was starting to extend around the

world

the ideological and regulatory playing

field was now set for an unprecedented

expansion in global economic activity an

era starting with the fall of the Berlin

Wall that is now called hyper

globalization countries around the world

began in earnest to industrialize their

economies bringing in country workers

into urban centres to work in the

low-skilled manufacturing of goods that

could now be exported to global supply

chains global trade agreements removed

the limitations of the national economy

as the world economy could absorb a much

greater amount of production this

process of industrialization in China

and other emerging markets drove huge

growth in the global economy over this

time the expansion of telecommunication

networks and the introduction of

computerized coordination into the

corporation enabled it to geographically

disaggregate certain key aspects of

production outsourcing expanded creating

greater exchange along the emerging

global supply chains more products and

information we're starting to move

between more nodes faster and a greater

volume

the deregulation of financial

institutions in the late 80s enabled the

formation of a global financial

architecture to move investment around

the world foreign direct investment

started to flow to emerging economies as

money became relatively freely available

within capital markets this was the

pinnacle of neoliberal economic

globalization that took place during the

1990s and early 2000s with the

development of global supply chains and

hyper growth in China driving the

commodity supercycle this period of

globalization drove dramatic changes

around the world in places like Dubai

Shenzhen or here in Shanghai as a city

grew at 10% a year for 20 years with its

iconic skyscrapers appearing almost

overnight Shanghai will forever

personify this period of globalization

as the balance of power in the global

economy changed substantially this era

marked the culmination of a centuries

long process in the shift of power and

decision-making from political

organisations to the markets and private

enterprise

this period of extraordinary growth in

the global economy all started

unraveling over the course of a few

months with the emergence of a global

financial crisis the well accepted

truths of economic development were

shattered overnight everything became

open to requesting and an era of

uncertainty began the cold hard

realities of national divides and

geopolitics came to once again prevail

an era in the history of globalization

was over and a period of searching began

when a new model for globalization was

to emerge almost a decade later it would

take a very different form

the net result of this period of hyper

globalization is an economy that has

evolved into a global form that is too

complex for any nation state or

centralized organization to manage in

the space of just two decades something

profound had happened some kind of

global system had emerged that was

greater than any of its parts after

thousands of years of people being

guided by ruling elite according to a

multiplicity of local cultures and their

different value systems humanity is now

embarked on an extraordinary process the

formation of a single global value

system a single logic for value exchange

that is extending ever farther and ever

deeper to replace the age-old structures

that have organized societies for

centuries

the form of hyperglobalisation that

expanded around the turn of the

millennium was based on neoliberal

economic theory it was marked by a

reduction in trade barriers the

development of outsourcing and global

supply chains

the privatization of state assets and

the shift of power from national

legislation to multinational

institutions the massive expansion of

the global financial market and the

formation of the global cities network

but the financial crisis was to bring

this massive expansion in economic

exchange to a shattering end

you

the global flow of goods finance and

services flattened the well accepted

truths of the free market became

reopened for questioning as

multinational organizations like the IMF

and World Bank have come to have less

influence through the financial crisis

the political establishment in developed

economies became increasingly de

legitimatize as nationalism began to

once again expand

while many speculated about the end of

globalization underneath the ashes the

seeds for the next era of globalization

had already been sown as a revolution in

information technology was continuing

unabated the model for globalization was

transforming the globalization of today

is no longer driven by increasing

exchange of goods but instead

information and services while political

organization remains divided soaring

flows of cross-border data are taking

global integration to new levels as we

approach four billion people connected

to the Internet these huge flows of data

and the platforms that orchestrate them

have become the new architecture to

globalization

the story of globalization as it has

unfolded over the past decades has been

one of a new set of information

technologies enabling the development of

a global economic and financial system

that brings humanity into a commonly

shared value system mediated by markets

in the past the linkage between the

underlying information technology and

the institutional structures that

resided on them was not apparent

globalization was seen to be driven by

the institutional structure of the

multinational corporation of trade free

agreements of financial markets and the

physical connectivity of the global city

and global air and shipping networks but

after the financial crisis this started

to change as the underlying information

technology began to mature

there was an inflection point everything

was starting to shift into the realm of

technology and information with the

development of the second generation of

web technologies mobile and cloud

computing and the rise of online

platforms the world was about to become

connected in unimaginable new ways as

the underlying technology and software

platforms matured networks were starting

to take over the coordination of

critical aspects of human organization

the internet was now moving from being a

decoration on industrial societies to

becoming the core infrastructure

mediating global economic exchange

information technology and economic

markets were about to converge in a new

model of the platform economic and

social organization were starting to be

channeled directly through this global

information network giving rise to what

is called the platform economy for

thousands of years markets and

hierarchies were the only alternatives

when it came to aggregating human effort

but through the financial crisis both

the markets and social institutions of

the Industrial Age

had shown their limitations now

technology was starting to show the

third option real-time distributed

information based networks the critical

economic aspect that started to change

with the rise of information technology

was the placing of the means of

production into the hands of many and

the interconnectivity between them

through which they could connect

collaborate and exchange value outside

of the traditional centralized

structures for the first time since the

Industrial Revolution the most important

inputs into the core economic activities

of the most advanced economies came to

be widely distributed in the population

it began with computation storage and

communication but is increasingly

expanding to all areas including

material production at the same time

network communications dropped

transaction costs to a very low level

making it much easier for people to set

up their own networks for collaboration

value creation and exchange without

traditional formal organization this

meant that the production of information

and knowledge could happen without large

investments of capital and overhead

costs of management and transaction fees

this in turn allowed for production to

move outside of the domain of the market

and more into the domain of peer

production within social networks based

upon a more complex set of motives and

values than those of the pure market

logic we saw this first with open source

software core aspects of what used to be

an industrial information and cultural

economy turned into a social production

economy that began to seriously compete

with the major economic actors and

destabilize power disrupting traditional

market logic in new ways that were

previously almost unthought-of these new

online organizations leveraged a

critical new advantage that was made

possible by the information networked

economy loosely coupled distributed

collaboration around a common resource

to deliver overall if

sees something that was significantly

absent in the neoliberal efficient

market model constructed around closed

organizations competing as the first

generation of web technologies were all

about the exchange of ideas media and

information it had little direct impact

on the global economy

however this began to change with the

development of a new set of server-side

technologies that led to web 2.0 where

people can both read from the internet

and write to it this new technology made

it possible for people to interact

through collaborative platforms both

producing and consuming content creating

new forms of user-generated systems as a

means of production and exchange of

value not just of information and ideas

but increasingly of physical assets the

critical economic aspect that changed

with the second-generation web around

2013 and 2014 is that the set of

resources that people were sharing moved

primarily from being information

knowledge and culture shared primarily

in social networks of informal free

social exchange to models where people

were making money via the provision of

services like driving someone on uber or

online staffing platforms connecting

enterprises and workers on demand

companies like Airbnb rapidly built

multibillion-dollar global businesses

reaching vast borderless communities via

internet platforms

in this respect the platform economy can

be seen as the merging of the social

networks and collaborative platforms of

early web 2.0 with the market as it

caught up with the new technology and

worked to commercialize the new

possibilities for economic activity

mediated through information networks

the result was that the early social

free and sharing model got somewhat

displaced by the market model but also

merged in new ways these organizations

absorbed the networked user generated

model for production and exchange of

services into a new platform market

model while greatly reducing the

centralized organization that managed

them

within just a few short years platforms

rapidly scaled to become major actors in

the global economy whose scale and

profits few could ignore the internet

was starting to come of age as a system

of economic organization in September

2014 the Chinese online commerce company

Alibaba Group conducted its initial

public offering the largest ever in

history this event attracted

considerable media attention some of it

naturally commenting on the changing

balance of the global economy and the

growing impact of platforms within just

a decade of their origins platforms came

to dominate the list of largest

corporations by market capitalization as

people started to take seriously this

emerging internet based economy these

platforms managed to tap into the new

possibilities created by widespread

mobile connectivity and the coordinating

power of advanced technologies to create

scale and serve untapped markets more

rapidly than ever seen before they match

suppliers and producers within two-sided

markets and harness the untapped

resources of the end-user to meet basic

human needs and desires in ways that

would be beyond the imagination and

capacities of the traditional closed

enterprise they activate communities of

individuals and resources in new ways

accelerating innovation and challenging

major incumbents

this new model to globalization is

changing who is participating how

business is done internationally where

the economic benefits are flowing and

how fast the competitive landscape

changes even though advanced economies

in general continue to be the leaders in

most flows the door has opened to more

countries to small companies and

startups and even to billions of

individuals whereas previously

corporations would have to build their

own IT infrastructure at great cost in

time this is now instantly available for

anyone with an internet connection and

the know-how as such success in the

global economy becomes much more linked

to technical know-how innovation and

entrepreneurial Drive rather than

finance and capital assets this new

digital model of globalization is much

less capital intensive rather than

establishing a large physical presence

in many countries some companies focus

local offices on sales and marketing

only those that deliver digital goods

and services can enter new international

markets without establishing a physical

presence at all globalization is no

longer a hunt for the cheapest labor

with automation and the shift into an

information services economy production

can be restored to be close to end

demand and sources of high skilled

workers added to this 3d printing and

other distributed technology will in the

not-too-distant future have an impact on

supply networks and the cross-border

trade landscape

the potential for a new distributed form

of globalization is now forming based on

information networks that link people

directly into a common global platform

economy the global networks that

proliferated with the previous round of

globalization are transforming to become

richer and deeper and more distributed

through the proliferation of information

technology this has the potential to

bypass the centralized hubs that

previously dominated the global economy

as people and places that were

previously on the fringes can become

more directly connected into this newly

forming global system of economic

organization

in the past decades this process of

economic transformation was driven by

corporate structures and the financial

system who will of course continue to

play a major role but after the platform

revolution going forward the center of

this process of change will be happening

on the Internet as technology and

economic development are starting to

become one the platform economy took us

one step closer to merging our newly

created web-based networks with the

management of our global economy

it gave us a greater glimpse into the

emerging networked economy and for the

scale of change underway as the term

disruption became the new buzzword

however it is safe to say that the

largest deepest and most disruptive

structural changes are still ahead of us

as the information revolution continues

at full pace with a new technology

paradigm emerging that will have

profound economic consequences

consequences that go far beyond what we

have seen to date and may well happen at

an even faster pace

the decades around the turn of the

millennium saw huge changes taking place

as global connectivity expanded along

almost all dimensions now the

repercussions of these changes were

starting to feed back and be felt by all

as the world started to move into an

ever more dynamic state

critical aspects of an industrial age

set of institutions started to grind to

a halt in the face of an ever more

dynamic and complex environment that was

presenting an ever more complex set of

issues as societies were starting to

become aware of the realities of living

in a globally interconnected context

the expansion of supply chains and the

rise of emerging markets particularly

China was disrupting the global

political and economic establishment

that had been a source of stability and

order for over half a century the

liberal economic order and democratic

systems were stalling as they had failed

to keep pace with the rapidly expanding

social networks that now occupied

people's time and attention

the level of inequality brought about by

globalization and financialization was

becoming almost unbearable for many

societies the impacts of a changing

climate and multiple forms of

environmental degradation were starting

to become a reality centuries-old social

economic and environmental structures

had been irreversibly altered and

humanity was starting to find itself in

uncharted territory stability was

becoming the exception no longer the

norm as massive upheavals have left the

global economy society and environment

unstable along many dimensions

alongside all these developments the

information revolution was starting to

enter into an even deeper and more

radical phase in its development

globalization is a complex

multi-dimensional phenomenon but at the

heart of it is the formation of some

kind of global organization the level of

globalization that we have achieved by

now

only happens through advanced forms of

information and telecommunication

technology without it the formation of

global supply chains and outsourcing

would not have happened without it the

massive growth of multinational

corporations would not have been

possible without it the financial system

would be a mere shadow of what it is

today although it was long apparent

technology and market structures were

the driving force at the heart of

globalization that would profoundly

change societies what exactly the

outcome to that change process would

look like had not been apparent now a

new set of information technologies were

about to give us a glimpse into a future

that looked very different from the past

societies had lasted many decades at

this stage with a growing mismatch

between their ever expanding underlying

technological means and the legacy

institutional structures that sat on top

of them the platform revolution had

shown us a new form of information based

organization but the next stage in the

internet's evolution was about to take

this to new levels as economic

organization and information networks

were about to truly become one the

decades-long struggle between

hierarchies and networks is now entering

a new stage as a new vision for the

third generation web is starting to take

shape and the endgame for globalization

is coming into focus

with the rise of platforms the internet

had become a core structure supporting a

new process of digital globalization

with a billion people around the world

coming online every five years the

internet had scaled rapidly but as a

consequence this core infrastructure of

the information revolution is now

starting to creak under its own weight

we scale the internet by simply building

out more cables and more computers

within the same architecture we went

from servers to server farms to data

centers to the hyper scale data centers

that run the Internet platforms of today

in the process the Internet had gone

from a public utility to being operated

by a small number of large platforms

owned by private for-profit companies

the internet had become something of a

walled garden built around huge

privately owned data centers there are

now some 400 hyperscale data centers in

the world that each contain tens of

thousands of servers almost half of

these reside in the United States these

computers do the heavy lifting for the

Internet but this centralization of the

Internet has resulted in a huge

concentration of power in the hands of

technology companies the algorithms that

run in these data centers operate these

emerging networks that are used by

billions daily but they are understood

and controlled by only a small handful

of people

it was cloud computing that made the

platforms of the second generation

Internet but what would happen if that

computing architecture changed today in

labs and startups a new kind of Internet

is being pieced together that may once

again rewrite the rules for

globalization

this next stage in the process of

convergence and transformation of the

global economy is enabled by a new set

of information technologies as we are

currently in the process of remaking the

underlying software supporting the

internet building what is called the

decentralized web this next stage of

economic development works to

decentralize economic activity and

shifts operations to global information

based networks like never before with

truly profound consequences the

centralized cloud computers of today are

changing as a new innovation in

computing is making it possible to turn

them into distributed computing networks

we can now simply design protocols that

enable a collection of computers to work

together as a single cloud computer in a

distributed fashion we can store data

securely and run the same forms of

complex algorithmic coordination on this

computer all without the need for the

centralized platform these protocols

enable people to connect to each other

within peer-to-peer networks to conduct

transactions directly and securely

without the centralized platform all

share one common database that all can

trust because of its transparent nature

and the need for consensus among peers

the decentralized web removes the

Internet's dependency upon centralized

systems to enable trust security value

exchange and computing resources

it creates networks for people to

interact create or exchange value

directly peer-to-peer bypassing

traditional market systems and existing

institutional structures in radical ways

on top of these secure peer networks can

be built new forms of economies these

decentralized economies work through a

token system where each network creates

a token that represents the underlying

value that is being created and

exchanged within that economy people can

then invest in that micro economy by

purchasing the tokens and likewise use

them in that ecosystem through this

token system block chains work to create

a whole new economy and value system

outside of the traditional utility based

market the outcome of the information

revolution Big Data Internet of Things

and advanced analytics is that we will

be able to sense and quantify our world

like never before this will give us the

capacity to quantify and begin to

account for all forms of value this is

something that was previously not

possible as we simply did not have the

information as the data starts to flow

in as our capacity to process the

information in real time matures through

advanced analytics we will increasingly

have the capacity to quantify what

people value in a more comprehensive way

and begin to manage this through peer

token markets instead of centralized

organizations token market economies can

now be built for any resource that needs

managing what we see emerging is a

global information network for mediating

economic activity directly through

distributed internet protocols and

algorithms bypassing traditional

institutions that appear to be stalling

in the face of the complexity that has

emerged

you

at the heart of globalization has always

been the potential for huge benefit to

all through global collaboration this

global collaboration can potentially

enable very rapid economic development

for any society by having a shared and

trusted global computing network through

which data can be shared and services

delivered anywhere this enables the

potential for global collaboration like

never before in the past we lived in a

world of many different nations

developing different solutions within

their own countries individually thus

having each nation reinventing the wheel

with the result being slow progress and

a massive amount of redundancy when

taken as a whole with the global

information system of the internet it is

now possible to collaborate on the same

generic solution on the global level

which is then duplicated and customized

for the different geographies the

potential for this model of creating

once and duplicating many times is

vastly increased as we move into a

global information and services economy

particularly when we add distributed

technologies with information technology

the capacity to duplicate information

and ideas is radically increased

likewise is the capacity to move them to

any place on the planet at the click of

a button when this is combined with a

new set of distributed technologies such

as solar cells wind turbines the

blockchain drones 3d printing a whole

new model to economic development starts

to emerge one that has the potential to

be radically more efficient more

distributed and inclusive a model where

global information networks allow for

mass collaboration in the development of

solutions online like Wikipedia or the

Linux operating system and then the

rapid duplication and deployment of

these solutions virtually anywhere thus

holding out the possibility for a

bottom-up era of global economic

development
you

this potential has been there since the

advent of the internet that is now

greatly more viable due to this emerging

secure and shared computing

infrastructure because of the secure

nature of these information systems we

can create economies and financial

system natively on top of them that

delivers the same quality of service

anywhere on the planet what is different

this time is the autonomy of these

systems our capacity to create systems

of organization on the Internet and to

coordinate human interaction directly

through those to secure those networks

and increasingly connect them up to real

world physical assets and technology

means that these networks are

increasingly starting to gain their

independence secure value exchange can

be built into the network removing their

prior dependence upon the traditional

financial system and national regulatory

framework this works to greatly increase

the autonomy of these new forms of

networked institutions just as the

multinational corporations and financial

institutions carved out their own

territory at the center of our global

cities so to these networks will create

their own spaces out on the edge of the

system in places like Haiti in the wake

of disasters in small jurisdictions but

also in cities as urbanization changes

the structure of power and governance

and cities come to gain more autonomy

and governance functions

everything and everyone is starting to

become connected and to find themselves

embedded within a networked fabric of

information that is wrapping around the

world disrupting the centuries-old

structures that carved up the planet

into separate jurisdictions and

societies while the logic of

hierarchical management within the

National framework has retreated and the

market has proven unsustainable

information networks are emerging as the

new form of globally distributed

coordination token markets can

potentially enable the management of

self-sustaining economies in a

distributed fashion without dependence

on the centralized institution of the

nation or corporation the responsibility

is shifted to the hands of every person

the question is one of values what

values do we build into this set of

emerging information based networks that

is being pieced together with every new

connection made

you

the world of yesterday was ruled by the

states

and armies the world of today by markets

and finance the world of tomorrow will

be an empire of networks but who will

rule that Empire could it be us