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thank you um yeah so this talk is a little bit of synthesis on a recap of a lot of work that has been done at Zulu in the last two weeks
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um the the title is kind of like trying to uh present the idea that there are network States but there are also other things that we can think about which might look like Network States or I'm actually a slightly different flavor and
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we try to elaborate this alternative conceptualization um so we already had biology presents his Concepts so I'm just gonna go very fast about this network's data according
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to the way in which it is described by Balaji is a set of Highly aligned online communities which have the capacity for Collective action which are called funding territories around the world in
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order to eventually gain diplomatic recognition from other states so uh that's interesting because this is actually a driver for increased plurality so all of sudden we can
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experiment with uh new types of software entities um but the the issue is that this is based on this concept of exit based governance where the idea is to exit
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from a particular jurisdiction in order to create a new Southern jurisdiction which is the Far In conflict or in competition um with the other existing Nation States
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from which one of exits and so this this brings this question of like what is the role of plurality in society and of course plurality can be bought a source of competition if the
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entities that are plural are actually uh conflicting or actually positioning themselves as a replacement or in order to supplant one another but plurality can also be a source of cooperation if
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the the additional entities and the additional layers of sovereignties are actually interfacing with one another without trying to take the space of each other and so um the idea that we have been
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elaborating in in the past few months now is the idea of a particular flavor of network state which is uh what we called Network States coordinations uh which essentially provide an alternative
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conceptualization of possible and sovereignty which is grounded not on the concept of exit but rather on the concept of cooperation and common-based collaboration
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so um this is like a preliminary description of what would a network State coordination look like it is voluntary communities of value aligned individuals so in this case it's quite
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similar to the first component of the Balaji Network State those communities share a common yet potentially implicit agenda for a particular societal Vision they come
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with a collective and identity which actually relies on self-determination and importantly because that's perhaps the the stronger distinction between Network States as barely describes them
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and the coordinations is that they exist alongside Other Nation States while introducing new layers of sovereignty to those domains that are not inherently territorial
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and so again this means that we are increasing plurality we are adding new entities that coexist and that can experiment with new form of sovereignties but instead of being based
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on exit based governance is based on a notion of interdependencies and actually recognize the possibility and in fact promote the idea of cooperation amongst multiple coordinations in order to
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actually achieve this Global coordination so if we look at it in a in a figurative way we can we can see how exiting national state can be perceived as some kind of landlord they are responsible
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for everything that relates to the physical territory which is a public infrastructure and forcing property right uh ensuring physical safety law enforcement Etc so this is all what a
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landlord is expected to do and then we have those Network state coordinations which can be regarded as some kind of distributed tenants which are actually responsible for Collective governance
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and shared use of common resources amongst themselves and those are actually communities of kinship which exist as non-territarial layers of sovereignty
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and so again what it means is that on the one hand we have the physical layer which is governed by national states which are defined through a particular and bounded territory a permanent
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population a government and diplomatic recognition in order to enter into relationship with other states and then Network States the way in which we are redefining the term if you like do not
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actually need a territory but essentially only need the the three last components which is a permanent population even though it can be a digitally bound population a government
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and diplomatic recognition and so essentially if we try to compare and contrast with traditional Nations and National States so a nation is a cultural entity it's a it's a group of
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people that share a cultural identity that have a sense of belonging to a collective and which can engage into a system of solidarity because of the kinship that they have amongst each other and then the national state is
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essentially these institutional scaffolding that is used in order to help a nation to coordinate itself which is based in the traditional national state science with basic territorial
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infrastructure safety and protection and of course all the legal rules that qualify into the jurisdiction and then all of a sudden because of digital technology we now have digital type of
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Nations which are uh same type of collectivity cultural identity Etc but which are born digitally instead of being born because of physical proximity and then those need those new type of
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Nations then take can also adopt their own set of institutional scaffolding which doesn't necessarily have to replicate the same institutional structure as the nation states but can be based on a more digital type of
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infrastructure and which is providing non-territarial Services because the nation is no longer a territorial Nation but a digital Nation and so again so we can see how in the end we're really just talking about what
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are the institutional scaffoldings that can be put into place in order to help the coordination of a particular Nation whether the nation is physical or digital and so again to try and illustrate so we have
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um on the on the on the geographical land territorial count we have the public sector and nation states which are providing public services to Citizens which are the Monopoly of violence and public infrastructure and
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then on the sky we have the private sector which are Market actors that are providing product and services to Consumer independently of their territorial localization now interestingly we can see how the private
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sector is also going further down and providing also specific services to to the same citizens that the public sector is also providing so while the national state is responsible as the landlord for the underlying framework it is also
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providing additional services like public welfare public education to the citizens that that exists that resides on their territory but the private sector is also starting to provide similar Services which are either
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complementary or competing with the public services and then when we enter into biology type of network State we can see that the private sector goes all the way down try to grab also the
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territorial layer in order to then create those corporate or liberal type of network States when we talk about coordination we're really talking about the middle layer and so the idea is that on the one hand we have the public sector on the other hand we have the
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private sector but there is also a third sector that can also provide those services to the citizens which is civil society or digital communities which can organize themselves and coordinate themselves in order to actually share
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and mutualize resources and provide Community Support to their own citizens and so let's see then we have now those three actors that are competing or complementing each other so yeah so basically this is the
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traditional way in which we create a national state a nation a territory and a government and then a network state is basically Nation with networked system of communication a government that then leads to a network States
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foreign so we can see how there is like an interface and an interaction between those different systems so we have the the political system which gives rate to through the public sector to the national state the market system will
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give scripts to potentially the network State as proposed by biology and then Civic society and the commons would give rise to the coordination type of network States um and so the the thing that we want to
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provide here and discuss is the the idea that we should we should actually all be exploring this concept of network State because this is something that uh is is extremely interesting and I think can actually
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help a lot of existing communities and digital Nation to coordinate themselves but the danger is to believe that there is only one recipe and that this one recipe is the one that currently has been proposed by biology and so what we
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want to do is actually provide a much larger plurality and variety of recipes and so um while we have the we have the traditional uh the seven
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step recipe that Balaji has identified for its uh its own flavor of network state which is essentially ultimately leading to exiting from an existing state in order to create a new state in
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order to escape from a jurisdiction and create a new jurisdiction uh this is uh the recipe for a network State coordination so it's still the same category it's still a network state but it's a completely different flavor and
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here the recipe is essentially like in seventh step is one identify a community of kinship so it's a little bit different from the way in which Balaji presented as like a group of a line individual here it's not about just the
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the intellectual or ideological alignment but it's really about the existence of a particular degree of kinship amongst those people step number two is identifying other communities in
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the world that have this type of same resonance and kinship so identifying new clusters of people that also resonate with those same type of of relational Fabric and therefore that can be held to
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qualify as this digital nation and then number three is finding ways in which because those communities resonate with one another and because they are kind of part of the same tribe then there can be ways in which they can support each
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other for instance if one Community has some type of extra resources they can share them with another community and this other community might have a different type of resources that are in Surplus and share it with another
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community so there is a kind of level of mutual but bilateral or Mutual multilateral support that emerge between those those kinship uh between communities and then number four is when
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at some point we might realize that each one of those communities are actually part of a greater whole of an umbrella entity of a collective of collectives and then we can actually bring these
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into being by just speaking it into existence and the moment in which we start having a name for this higher higher level Collective then we can reference it and then we can people can have enhance this as I am a member of
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this larger level Community um now number seven is now that we have identified and named this particular Collective we can also start instead of bilaterally exchanging resources between
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the different communities we can now start pooling resources together Under the Umbrella of these newly identified Collective and then this means that we can now have resources in Commons which
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can be managed and redistributed internally within the various nodes of that community tip and of course it is required an initial degree of governance in order to figure out how are we going
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to manage those resources number six is now that we have an entity with a particular name and therefore a reference to it then that this entity is capable of maintaining and managing
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Collective resources and Commons common pool resources then we can move to the next step which is all of student this entity can now engage into Collective action on its own behalf so instead of having the individual nodes of the
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network that are doing things on on the name of the network the network itself because it has its own resources can engage into a new form of collective action and of course these require further degrees of governance
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structure in order to understand how this Collective entity can be collectively uh governed and then finally a very interesting point number seven is um recognizing that there exist
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interdependencies between those different nodes and actually engaging in order to increase this degree of interdependencies by interweaving those Community with one another by exchanging not just exchanging resources but
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actually by exchanging the inherent DNA of those Community the equity that makes those Community uh what they are and exchanging them so that there is like sharing blood amongst the different nodes of the community so that everyone
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is now interweven interconnected interdependent which but extend the capacity to act but also increase the sustainability of this network of Networks and so the idea here is really to move
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away from the exit-based governance in which every individual that disagree with one another is creating its own network State and then you have like competition amongst those Network States into a very alternative framework in
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which it's more about recognizing that interdependency and interoperability amongst those different nodes is actually a precondition for proper coordination at the local and at the global level but also improving and
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promoting cooperation and and this is also interesting because of course interdependency is uh maybe a bit scary uh but also it's very powerful and the reason is that as long as
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everything is obtained so no one should be forced to be part of any type of coordination just like today sometimes we don't choose to be part of a particular National States here the the the the entering into the system is
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obtained but once you choose to enter into the system because you have identified those actors that you trust and that you have kinship with and therefore that you want to be interdependent with then the exit cause becomes a bit higher and why this is
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important is because this actually maximize the sustainability of the system because all of Sudan instead of having the usual problem with the tragedy of the Commons in which there are always some kind of incentive for
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free riding because I can benefit from the from the whole without actually contributing myself or by other exploiting the common resources because there is this step of inter weaving an
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interdependency it becomes much less profitable to free right because if I free ride with the people that I have that I am interweaving with then I'm also harming myself and so this this
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condition of interdependence and this uh this requirement of interweaving is actually a fundamental factor in order to support and promote cooperation but also to reduce the incentive for free
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riding that will exist otherwise um yeah that's it [Applause] [Music] okay we'll open up for some questions okay great
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thank you all right we've got a question here hi uh thank you for the presentation just wanted to ask you do you think there is some like limitation on the
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size of the digital Nations like can can they be like one billion people in one digital Nation or it will be more like local communities like tens maybe
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hundreds of people I think and 1 billion it's an important question because we've like of course scalability is important but there are different ways to scale and uh there is the traditional
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scalability that is based on like economies of scale in which you just grow bigger and bigger and bigger in the case of a coordination type of network States we talk about economies of scope
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which is actually you you have more of a fractal approach to scaling so the point is the market interconnect the more you're scaling but you don't need to scale in like one single unit that is encompassing everything it's more about
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actually finding the strongest possible alignment on the small group and then really interweaving this group as much as possible because there is trust there is kinship and there is a desire of interdependency as as a way of expanding
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the capacity but then finding other communities which are themselves highly aligned and therefore highly interweven which might be means we might be interested in interdependency but maybe to a lesser degree and still creating an
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interwovenness amongst those different clusters and then all of a sudden we have a new cluster that can also interweave with other clusters and so you can really think in a much more fractal way and therefore eventually you
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can reach billions but the the units can be very small and then the important and that's why it's like a digital Nation today on a nation today is like way too big like we we don't have kinship with all the people that are part of the same
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National States whereas if you actually have communities which are highly aligned and with strong kinship and the network of communities and then you can have network of network of communities and
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you always create this small number or like hundreds or maybe even thousand that's okay but you can then scale in a in a scope and then you can identify all the time a new cluster that you want to
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interconnect with and you can choose the degree of interdependency that you feel comfortable with hi I really enjoyed your speech and uh also your podcast with uh owaki grimpo I
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just want to ask what role do you see Network or coordination uh playing in developing or emerging economies yeah so um in fact there is something
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very interesting in those uh coordination because it's it's about mutualization right so it's about finding people that we want to that we we feel Affinity with that we feel
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kinship with and actually mutualizing resources together which I think in in Latin today like developed economy we all always go via the market and we just like transact all the time and then it's
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like very micro transaction for every type of thing that we need um in this model it's really about exploring these More mutualized Concept in which we are actually putting things together and by putting things together
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we can redistribute internally within this particular community that we trust and therefore limiting the need of actually going out and grabbing things from the market as long as you can fulfill the needs internally and so I
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think this can actually be a very interesting model to support developing Nation we are instead of having to constantly engage into a market-based approach you can actually engage in those more mutualized modalities and
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really which are which actually already common and already used in in many of those uh still developing countries so kind of trying to um standardize or create like a
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particular model around this in order to incentivize more of those things instead of just always having the fallback on the market and and not realizing that actually oftentimes we have a lot of things already and if we just meet your
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lives we can actually fulfill each other's needs because my Surplus can can satisfy your deficit and this versa so I think it's a it's a model that that can be very interesting and that can actually support those those communities
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which maybe have less resources and yet have a particular type of surplus and are willing to exchange and mutualize this Surplus with others yeah thank you so much also wanted to ask uh what what do you envision
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the import export of public goods within coordinations to look like the import expert yeah yeah so again so there is a distinction to be made between the mutualistic approach to sharing and then
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of course there is always a point in which there is either too much Surplus and the the internal the internal utilization doesn't need that much and therefore you can export it to either to the market and therefore you just have a
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standard transaction or you can then realize that well actually I have a surplus who would like to mutualize that Surplus with and therefore finding outer coordinations that we want to inter interweave with in order to actually
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exchange that Surplus and so all of cylinder is there is two types of transactionality that emerge there is the mutualistic economy that can be bought internal and external at a higher
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fractal level and then there is the traditional import export with the traditional and market economy because of course not all coordination will always find a way to mutualize everything inside or to intervene with
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everything like maybe there is something that I really need to purchase but all of a sudden you have less dependency on the traditional import export market-based system because you have this mutualized system that can also fulfill some of the needs
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and for one or two more questions if you do hey thank you so much I mean my question is mainly how do you kind of enforce that kinship between between communities because it seems like you know if there is any error within it then can kind of
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quickly become a communist like a communist state sorry I didn't hear yeah yeah so I mean how do you kind of enforce the kinship within each Community because I mean if we would if there's any error within it that could
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very quickly become a communist state are you enforce kinship yeah within within one Community yeah yeah I think the concept of enforcing kinship sounds very wrong uh I the point is not too unforce
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kinship the the point is to discover and build kinship and you should only interweave uh you should only like Step One is finding the people you are in a state of kinship with if kinship does no
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longer work you don't enforce it there isn't that doesn't make any sense to enforce kinship if kinship does no longer work either you have to fix it and try to modulate the conflict if there is a conflict or perhaps if there
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is no possible mediation possible that's perhaps the moment in which you should disconnect right and so the idea is not that exit is impossible it's just that you make exit a little bit harder in the same way as you know when you marry
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someone you can still exit if you like but you're you're making it intentionally a little bit harder because you're creating interdependency and interweaving and so it's kind of a commitment it's a commitment or a Terrace kinship let's connect let's
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enter with because we can do more together while also of course always realizing that uh you know first maybe maybe because we are married we're not gonna immediately diverse if there is one fight but if there is hundreds of
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fight maybe we want unforce kinship we will just crack the the agreement so it's kind of the same thing like it's more about identifying people you resonate with identifying people that you feel a strong sense of kinship and
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and trying to build and maintain this kinship and actually faster it by mutualizing resources Collective Collective action and so forth and Inter weaving so that we really we're ill in
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the same boat together and so we know that we're gonna support each other no matter what up to the point in which maybe there are always situation in which it doesn't make any more sense to be interwoven and so in that case we
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have to figure out we have to bring the cost even to exit costs are a bit higher than they will be otherwise you can still exit all right we'll go up for one more question uh hello as long as the previous uh
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presentation was about institutions so my question is how coordinations could exist and even influence institutions how can you see this how do they exist in what how coordinations and this
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community could influence institutions and coexist together yeah um so first of all a coordination the coordination side of digital nation is an Institutional structure itself
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it's just a novel institutional structure that is different from the traditional institution of the State uh yet they can because they can interface and they can also enter into partnership
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with the states uh they obviously have an influencing power right and so the idea is and especially because it is a network State because it's called a state then we can also
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enable a higher level like it's difficult for us for our digital Community to really influence our state but it's more possible for a network state to influence and to partner as an actor in international relations to
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actually enter into partnership with an existing nation states uh whether because they have like bought something to to win whether it's because the network state is actually engaging as an
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actor in international policy and actually you know publishing to well specific thing so all of Sudan we have a new actor within the international relationship into the geopolitics world
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that can but partner and influence policy discussions so this this obviously have an effect on the national state but it's existing as a separate entity
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thank you so much Primavera Philippe thank you [Applause] [Music]
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