- The Dutch East India Company ’ s licensed proto-sovereignty is perhaps the most obvious historical example.
- See Tom McCarthy, “ Palestine Now Recognised by Greater Power Than US or Israel — Google, ” Guardian, May 3, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/03/google-palestine -palestinian-territories. See also Greg Kumparak, “ Google Palestine Hacked and Defaced through a Domain Registry Attack, ” TechCrunch, August 26, 2013, http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/26 google-palestine-hacked-and-defaced-seemingly-through-a-domain-registry-attack/.
- As claimed in cases such as the Megaupload raids whereby USA federal authorities claimed transoceanic jurisdiction and seized the propertly of CEO Kim Dotcom in his New Zealand residence and place of business. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seizure\_of\_Megaupload.
- See James C. Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), as well as Bruno Latour, “ How to Think like a State ” (lecture at the WRR Scientific Council for Government Policy, The Hague, November 22, 2007), http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/P-133-LA%20HAYE-QUEEN.pdf.
- We see this transposition of the state into the Cloud quite literally in Estonia ’ s efforts to secure a full “ back-up ” of the country ’ s data, in case of (Russian) cyberattack. The plan calls for the distribution of “ data embassies ” in different parts of the world so that if the country ’ s systems were compromised or erased that could be restored from a comprehensive remote backup. See http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21645505-protect-itself-attack-estonia -finding-ways-back-up-its-data-how.
- An awkward-at-best vision of this at the scale of an entire nation might look like UK Prime Minister David Cameron ’ s Big Society initiative, which sought to “ integrate the free market with a theory of social solidarity based on hierarchy and voluntarism, ” or in other words, offload state services onto local charities wrapped in words like “ social media ” and “ decentralization. ” See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big\_Society.
- Or even agents well beyond that government ’ s borders, as today much of the US federal government data entry is done in India.
- See the US data.gov and the UK ’ s data.gov.uk (overseen by World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee) as very curtailed and limited examples of this federal information transparency.
- This refers to Robert Nozick ’ s notorious economic libertarian manifesto, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974) , where he introduces the conceptual ideal of the minimal state. See also Methaven ’ s “ ultraminimal state ” and its Facestate project: Andrea Hyde, “ Metahaven ’ s Facestate, ” Walker Art Center, December 13, 2011, http://www.walkerart.org/ magazine/2011/metahavens-facestate.
- The confusion this sows is readily apparent in both attempts to curtail Google under the rubric of a trust “ monopoly ” and in the awkward rationales for why Google is actually not a monopoly. See judicial “ originalist ” Robert Bork ’ s back-bending “ What Does the Chicago School Teach About Internet Search and the Antitrust Treatment of Google, ” Robert H. Bork and J. Gregory Sidak, Journal of Competition Law & Economics 8 (2012): 663 – 700.
Notes
399