uair01
Antediluvian
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2005
- Messages
- 5,413
- Location
- The Netherlands
Let's put this here. How times have changed:
Neal Stephenson’s classic 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash depicts a future United States in which all forms of hierarchical authority have collapsed and each suburban subdivision have become its own burbclave requiring visas and passports to enter. There is a character name Raven who is untouchable for crimes he commits as he rides around on his motorcycle, because he is a sovereign. He’s a sovereign because he has a nuclear weapon strapped to his back that he will detonate if anyone comes to arrest him.
It’s struck me in recent years that Facebook was on its way to becoming a sovereign. Sovereignty means that there’s no one with higher authority to control you, an attribute that is usually reserved for states. Facebook is now so large and powerful that it’s hard to say the government of the United States can control it. Like a state, it has started to accumulate the attributes of sovereignty; it has aspirations to create its own currency, Libra, and created what it called its Supreme Court, the Facebook Oversight Board. That board, filled with eminent persons drawn from academia, law, and international politics announced their decision on Facebook’s de-platforming of Donald Trump last Tuesday.
https://www.americanpurpose.com/blog/fukuyama/facebook-sovereignty/
Neal Stephenson’s classic 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash depicts a future United States in which all forms of hierarchical authority have collapsed and each suburban subdivision have become its own burbclave requiring visas and passports to enter. There is a character name Raven who is untouchable for crimes he commits as he rides around on his motorcycle, because he is a sovereign. He’s a sovereign because he has a nuclear weapon strapped to his back that he will detonate if anyone comes to arrest him.
It’s struck me in recent years that Facebook was on its way to becoming a sovereign. Sovereignty means that there’s no one with higher authority to control you, an attribute that is usually reserved for states. Facebook is now so large and powerful that it’s hard to say the government of the United States can control it. Like a state, it has started to accumulate the attributes of sovereignty; it has aspirations to create its own currency, Libra, and created what it called its Supreme Court, the Facebook Oversight Board. That board, filled with eminent persons drawn from academia, law, and international politics announced their decision on Facebook’s de-platforming of Donald Trump last Tuesday.
https://www.americanpurpose.com/blog/fukuyama/facebook-sovereignty/