Sovereignty in the digital world

As seen previously, the digital world today, specifically in the form of contemporary, large and private online platforms, is fundamentally challenging the beginning-of-time model of government control over the state, and state control over its citizens. However, it is the digital world itself that could ultimately give sovereignty renewed meaning. Because the digital world is artificial, constructed following preset specifications, total control could theoretically be possible, embedded into the system. For example, in the analogue world a state, and more so a government, cannot control (unless with disproportionate effort) the action of one of their citizens grabbing an apple (regardless of for what purpose the apple is grabbed). However, in the digital world apple-grabbing (and its outcomes) must be predesigned and installed into the system as a potentiality to enable such an action to be possible. Otherwise it simply cannot occur. Purpose, and the means to achieve it, therefore have to be built into the system (see also §01.00.17). In other words, in the digital world information processing is predetermined and thus controllable. It remains to be seen whether new, in the sense of unpredicted, processing can take place in it, or whether its users (humans and artificial Beings alike) will only be able to act in specific predetermined ways—whether new creation is possible within that which has been created already.

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