Risto Linturi
Transaction costs continue to decrease - empowering people both in good and bad. Faceless people hide behind anonymity. Distancies reduce and cultures get mixed – this leads to growing complexity with chaotically different outcomes.
Governments try to control the turbulence by surveillance and limitations. This adds tensions, strengthens hierarchies and possibilities to abuse this power. Trust between citizens and their organizations is necessary for any complex networked economy. Lower transaction cost requires lower per item cost of trust.
People are globally afraid of big corporations and even their own governments. Anonymity is appreciated. In Scandinavia, where governance is more transparent and corporations cannot abuse personal information, anonymity is not so highly valued.
Perhaps the only way to retain both our societal trust and freedom may be a transparent society where we would have to give up much of our privacy. The Greek word for private is idiotiko as opposed to democracy – perhaps this is wisdom. Perhaps privacy is a hedonistic value and hiding not necessary either for economical success or societal stability. Sadly Internet helps both concealment and openness.
A crucial issue here is the potential rise of electronic cash. If someone can send me a blackmail letter - and fulfill the threat anonymously in Internet - and also anonymously collect the money over internet – it could not be controlled without massive global NSA-type organizations - if the net does not support tracing.
Perhaps global clearing of electronic cash could also assist in collecting VAT.
When Popper wrote his Open Society, there were very few really global networks. Still he maintained that no one should have hierarchical power over all issues. As more and more issues become global, citizens feel too detached from centers of power. Perhaps the world should not be divided just geographically. Perhaps we could be citizens of several states simultaneously - one physical and several virtual, based on our interests. Currently the physical state has all responsibilities and global matters are governed by organizations getting their mandate from local governments Internet ICANN being among few exceptions. If we wish that people could feel they really can affect global issues within their interest, we perhaps should consider virtual localities and some sort of semi-independent democracy within these.
Another issue is - our growing capability through networks and automated production lines to manufacture copies of just about anything. Value is in bits and the one who gets them copyrighted or patented first gets all the profit. One could claim that the first has created the added value but this is mostly not true. More and more often this leads only to greater profits for economically developed countries and poverty for the countries who could have invented the same things later.
If all the positive benefits of networking could be harnessed – developing nations could prosper and sustainable growth could be reached as much of the material production can be replaced by virtual systems with decreasing electric consumption.