Vanishing Intellectual Boundaries: Virtual Networking and the Loss of Sovereignty and Control

The programmable electronic computer is unique in the history of technology. It is a machine that may change its own instructions and can be programmed to emulate or simulate and thereby become any other machine. This definition of the stored-program computer is often misconceived by analysts who focus on narrow issues of what the machine does with information flow, instead of how it changes what flows. Because of this machine's capabilities, and that of ancillary electronics and optics technologies, over the next two decades we will probably witness a watershed in industrialization and the practice of science. The new technologies are also likely to create problems for international trade, the specialization of labor, and the use of national resources: they will make it virtually impossible to protect intellectual creations, including creations that underpin the workings of computer infrastructure; they will muddle definitions of legal, political, social, and economic boundaries—and impinge on paradigms of national and perhaps personal and corporate sovereignty; and they will accelerate the decentralization of decision making and permit stronger remote management.