CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi
INTRODUCTION 1
• Three Questions about the Future: Answers from the Past 2
1 THE INTERNET ERA—AND BEYOND 9
• Beyond the Information Revolution: The Singularity 11
• Thinking about the Revolutions of the Singularity 12
• Bounded and Unbounded Visions 13
• Bounded and Unbounded Problems: The Space Development Example 14
• Y2K as the Opposite Case: Mistaking Bounded for Unbounded Problems 18
• Death and Taxes: Extending Lifespan, and Its Consequences 20
• Taking a Possibility Seriously 21
• How to Think about the Effects of These Revolutions: The “Pessimistic
Scenario” 23
• Industrial Goods as Software: The Next Phase of the Information
Revolution, and Its Implications 25
• Civil Society and the Hazards of the Singularity Revolutions: The
Case of Nanotechnology 29
• Civil Societies and the Economy of the Singularity 31
• After the Economic State: The Civic State and the Network
Commonwealth 39
• Hobbes and Rousseau in Cyberspace 40
• Limits to the Breakdown of Big Governments 42
• The Growing Worldwide Market in Sovereignty Services and the
Decline of the Monopoly of the Economic State 44
• Linux as a Foreshadowing of the Economics of the Singularity: The
End of Capitalism and the Triumph of the Market Economy 47
• The Civic State: On the Nature and Limits of Governments in the Era
of the Singularity 55
• Building the Network Commonwealth: The Power of Self-Assembly
Protocols 61
• Political Self-Assembly Protocols: A Tool for the Singularity Revolution 62
• A Call for Civilizational Construction 65
2 THE ANGLOSPHERE AND ITS REVOLUTIONS 67
• The Anglosphere and the New Understanding of the West 72
• Reconvergence and Culture: Why the Information Revolution Is Drawing
the Anglosphere Closer Together 75
• What Is the Anglosphere? 79
• The Fundamental Structures of the Anglosphere: States, Regions, and
Cultural Nations 82
• Cultural Nations—The Invisible Understructure 83
• Cultural Nations and Regions: What’s the Difference? 84
• Becoming a Self-Aware Civilization: The Anglosphere Perspective 89
• Memetic Plagues of the Anglosphere 93
• Coming Home to the Anglosphere 100
3 TRUST, CIVIL SOCIETY, GOVERNMENT, AND CYBERSPACE 109
• One World through the Internet? The Role of Trust, Cooperation, and
Cultural Commonality 113
• Trust and Civil Society 114
• Trust, Reform, and the Three Gateways 117
• One World, Many Marketplaces 122
• The New Amphibians: Living Simultaneously in Cyberspace and the
Physical World 124
• Better Communications and the Rise of Nationalism 126
• Space and Power: Geopolitics and the Topology of Information Space 129
• Hanseatic Leagues in Cyberspace 132
• The New Understanding of the Market: Rules of Thumb for Intervention 135
• The Anarcho-Capitalist Debate and Other Red Herrings 138
• Civic States and Large-Scale Federations 141
• Coherent Noncontiguous States 142
• What Will Become of Big Government Establishments? 143
4 THE CIVIC STATE AND THE NETWORK COMMONWEALTH 146
• The Sinews of the Network Commonwealth: Evolving New Forms from
Existing Elements 148
• Trade, Security, and Technology Intersect: The Case of Anglosphere
Defense Cooperation 159
• Who Will Control the Commonwealth? Popular Control of Transnational
Institutions 167
• Commonwealth or Tribalism 169
• Network Commonwealths around the World 172
• United Nations—or Associated Commonwealths? 179
5 THE ANGLOSPHERE AS A UNIQUE CIVILIZATION 181
• The Anglosphere Constitutional Tradition and War 185
• Five Civil Wars: Union and Secession in the Anglosphere 193
• Preserving the National Voice in a Decentralized World 197
• The Anglosphere’s History as the History of Its Cultural Nations 199
• American Cultural Nations and Their Histories 199
• The Relationship between Cultural Nations and Nation-States 211
• Cultural Nations in Actuality: North America 213
• Cultural Nations Elsewhere in the Anglosphere 223
• Regions, Civic States, and Scale 224
6 THE ANGLOSPHERE CENTURY 227
• 1776: Divergence and the End of the First Empire 228
• Convergence in Politics: The Dilemma of the Second Empire 230
• Potential Roadblocks to an Anglosphere Network Commonwealth 233
• Postimperial Identity Questions in the Commonwealth States 237
• The African Special Relationship: American Africans, the Caribbean,
and Africa 238
• Embedded Cultures, Native Nations, and Pan-Anglosphere Minorities 240
• What’s at Stake: Uses of the Network Commonwealth 242
• Controlling Dangers, Maintaining Freedoms: Constitutional Traditions and
the Technologies of the Singularity 248
• Common Law and Common Markets: Harmony without Homogenization 250
• The Anglosphere Debate 251
• Moving toward an Anglosphere Network Commonwealth 257
• Doing Their Part: Leadership and the Emergence of the Network
Commonwealth 257
• Devolution and the Neverendum in Scotland and Quebec 258
• African America: The Stalled Transition to High Trust 261
• Prospects for the Anglosphere 263
• Canada and Le Projet Trudeau 264
• Quebec and the Nine Provinces: Two Nations and Two Network
Civilizations 266
• Britain: Scotland and the West Lothian Question; The Euro and the
Westphalian Question 268
• The United States and the Anglosphere: From Post–Cold War
Reorientation to the Challenge of the Singularity 274
• South Africa: What Form of Union? 277
• Australia and New Zealand: Identity in Oceania 278
• Ireland: What Price the EU? 280
• Trade and Defense Drivers for the Network Commonwealth 283
• The Anglosphere as the “Offshore Island” 285
• The Anglosphere and the Challenge of the Singularity 287
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 291
INDEX 321
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 337
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