Ever since the Dot-com bubble burst in 2000, the rapid scale and pace of development of technology have, radically and disruptively transformed our societies and daily lives. While there is no denying that this has made life easier, it has also thrown up complex challenges that call for a revisit of some fundamental notions in polity and governance.
Challenges to notion of nation-state
First, as defined by political theorists, a nation-state is a territorially-bounded sovereign polity. However, this fundamental notion of a nation-state of a geographical unit in which citizens live is undergoing a massive change because of technology. While geographical boundaries are still essential to be safeguarded against physical aggression/invasion, there are now several externalities occurring across the borders of nation-states, i.e. cyber-attacks, which have a ripple effect on the physical boundaries to challenge their socio-economic and political existence. The advent of Web3, massive peer-to-peer networks and blockchains has allowed actors, both state and non-state, to influence areas such as trade, commerce, health and education even while remaining outside of financial and judicial scope.
