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I think the national-empire phase was worse. It had the same level of exploitation but an added layer of hypocritical idealism. The difference between the Imperial Raj and Company Raj in India was that the the company era people didn’t pretend (as much) to be noble idealists.
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We’re engineering imperial colonial era in the Internet age now. The Corportation Raj era is drawing to a close. Four political powers: Russia, China, EU and US are taking different approaches to building new empires based on NOT renegotiating consent-of-governed.
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Russia and China are like Spain and Portugal. Naked aggression in building a cyber-empire without even a Papal Bull dividing up the world by longitude. They’ll probably fail in the same way. Gangsters never learn to govern.
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The EU is approaching it like the continental colonialists. To understand the future as mapped out by GDPR, look to the colonial models of Netherlands, France, Belgium etc. The US is taking a British approach. High-minded commerce-inspired incompetence. Gunboat diplomacy.
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A new Great Game is afoot, with the Internet playing the role of Afghanistan. The companies are going to decline. Political power is going to replace it.
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Replying to
Afghanistan is considered the graveyard of empires from before colonialism though. The Persians and Chinese and Ottomans failed there too. I think that reputation dates to Alexandrian times. I suspect the Internet is not quite so ungovernable.
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Are you sure? I can think of at least three major patterns underlying it -- tech debt, encryption, & communication immediacy -- which makes it the equivalent of mountainous terrain inhabited by an unexpectedly well-armed tribal resistance.
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Also, your hypothetical government which subdued the internet would have to be quite good at technology. That would definitely not be the US government, as it stands. China's probably has the best shot at it. I doubt it's good enough, either, but I've not made an honest assay.
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And meanwhile the gap between existing realms of governance and the edge of the digital frontier widens. One of the causes of your Great Weirding is that the bubble of "our world is largely governed" is popping / has popped. Our world is largely ungoverned, at the moment.
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