Monographie Open Access Vollzugriff
Archipelago, and the information platform that is the state
A political philosophy based on information and its processing- Autor:innen:
- Reihe:
- The Regulation of Digital Technologies, Band 4
- Verlag:
- 2026
Zusammenfassung
Dieses Buch skizziert eine neue politische Philosophie, die auf Information und ihrer Verarbeitung beruht. Aristoteliker werden die Analyse zu schätzen wissen; diejenigen, die auf Platons Seite stehen (es gibt nur zwei Arten von Menschen, wie Coleridge sagte), eher weniger. Im Kern stützt sie Aristoteles’ Argument, indem sie seine intuitiv richtige, aber unbegründete und nie vollständig ausgearbeitete Behauptung ergänzt, dass Staaten dem Menschen natürlich sind. Sie korrigiert Platon und seine Epigonen (praktisch jeden politischen Philosophen seither), indem sie deren Behauptung widerlegt (die heute als selbstverständlich gilt), dass Staaten künstlich seien, das Produkt einer Übereinkunft zwischen Menschen. Dieser Titel erscheint auch Open Access.
Schlagworte
Publikation durchsuchen
Bibliographische Angaben
- Auflage
- 1/2026
- Copyrightjahr
- 2026
- ISBN-Print
- 978-3-7560-3902-9
- ISBN-Online
- 978-3-7489-6926-6
- Verlag
- Nomos, Baden-Baden
- Reihe
- The Regulation of Digital Technologies
- Band
- 4
- Sprache
- Deutsch
- Seiten
- 502
- Produkttyp
- Monographie
Inhaltsverzeichnis
KapitelSeiten
- Foreword
- 1. *
- 2. *
- 3.
- 4. The decline of the Westphalian state*
- 5. Why now? The digital world*
- 6. The three (informational) milestone moments in humanity’s development*
- 7. The owl of Minerva*
- 8. A God-like, Genesis moment for humans
- 1. Everything is information*
- 2. Datasets*
- 3. Each dataset to be considered a closed system*
- 4. *
- 5. Information can be processed
- 6. Processing on datasets*
- 7. New information*
- 8. *
- 9. Life, birth, death*
- 10. The analogue world. Nature*
- 11. The digital world: a simulacrum gone rogue*
- 12. Sometimes blended, but never the same*
- 13. The individual is torn in the digital world
- 14. *
- 15. ‘All that is solid melts into air’
- 16. Information in the analogue world is finite, but infinite in the digital world*
- 17. Total control is impossible in the analogue world, but possible in the digital one
- 1. *
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5. The materialisation and dematerialisation of information*
- 6.
- 7. The materialisation of (immaterial) information
- 8. The dematerialisation of materialised (immaterial) information
- 9.
- 10. The invention of intellectual property
- 11.
- 12. The (re-)materialisation of information into digits (the digitisation of information)
- 13.
- 14. The digitisation of material, analogue-world information*
- 15. The digitisation of (already) dematerialised information
- 16. Digital information is infinite*
- 17. Digital-born and digital world-only information*
- 18. Digital humans? *
- 1. Beings can and will process information
- 2. Life is information processing: organisations and artificial Beings have lives of their own*
- 3. All Beings, when they perish, become Things
- 4.
- 5.
- 6. Organisations
- 7. Why do organisations come into existence at all? How do they die?*
- 8.
- 9. The state is an organisation*
- 10.
- 11. Biological Beings do not have a purpose, while non-biological Beings do*
- 12. Artificial Beings*
- 13.
- 14. The effigy of an artificial Being*
- 15.
- 16. Words (language)*
- 17. Money*
- 18. Computer programs*
- 19. A, materialised, fiction*
- 20. Artificial Beings do not have a need to survive and can die*
- 21.
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4. Humans differ from each other
- 5.
- 1. *
- 2. *
- 3.
- 4. Artefacts*
- 5. Things (and Beings, in this regard) are to be treated as a single, unitary dataset
- 1. *
- 2. The processing of information leads to the creation of new information*
- 3. *
- 4. Processing is material*
- 5. *
- 6. A beginning but not necessarily an end
- 7. Co-processing is possible, but not all processing is equal
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11. *
- 12. The processing of information by humans is made possible only on the information platform that is their state*
- 13.
- 1. *
- 2.
- 3.
- 4. The purpose of the processing is irrelevant to Reason
- 5. *
- 6. Why does Reason exist in Beings?
- 7. Not neutral*
- 8. Is Reason specific to humans only? *
- 1. *
- 2. Beings will process information because they have needs*
- 3. The need to survive; the conditions for existence*
- 4. It is not necessary for the processing to happen
- 5. Is whatever that is necessary to serve a need also natural? *
- 6. The digital world
- 7. Opportunity*
- 8. Ability*
- 9.
- 1. Humans need to augment their information processing*
- 2. Augmentation of information processing: the need of needs*
- 3. Only humans need to augment their information processing*
- 4.
- 5. Augmentation towards an imagined (not real) end
- 6. Creativity
- 7. Humans need to augment their information processing individually*
- 8. There is no purposeless individual*
- 9. On human nature*
- 10. *
- 1. Control*
- 2. Total control is impossible*
- 3. There is no dataset without any control exercised over it
- 4. Control over new or first-processed information*
- 5. Attributes of a dataset
- 6. Access*
- 7. Control can be delegated*
- 8. Control is not pursued for its own sake*
- 9. Power*
- 1. *
- 2.
- 3. *
- 4. *
- 5. *
- 6.
- 7.
- 8. *
- 9.
- 10. *
- 1.
- 2. Platforms in the analogue world*
- 3. Platforms in the digital world*
- 4.
- 5.
- 6. The state as a digital platform?
- 7. In what way, then, are states information platforms for their citizens? *
- 1. *
- 2. *
- 3. There is no distinction between modern and ancient states*
- 4. *
- 5. Society*
- 6. The relationship between a state and its citizens is unchangeable and unbreakable
- 7. Do wolves (or dogs) have a state? *
- 1. Names of humans*
- 2.
- 3. *
- 4. Names of Things (and non-human Beings)*
- 5.
- 6.
- 7. Individualisation in the digital world*
- 8. Logins and passwords
- 9. Domain names (and other unique naming attempts)*
- 10. Names of computer programs*
- 1. *
- 2.
- 3. *
- 4.
- 5. The transactional and territorial state*
- 6. *
- 7. Is there order in the state? *
- 1. *
- 2. *
- 3.
- 4.
- 5. States and individuals’ (their citizens’) interests are aligned, not conflicting*
- 6.
- 7.
- 1. *
- 2. What the state is*
- 3.
- 4. What the state is not*
- 5. *
- 6. The state is timeless*
- 7. What the state has (and does not have). The state has no purpose*
- 8. *
- 9. The state does not have a pre-ordained order*
- 10. What the state does (and does not do)*
- 11.
- 1. A state is different to its government*
- 2. What is a government?
- 3. The (only) purpose of the government is to control the state*
- 4. How did governments acquire this purpose? *
- 5. How did governments come to be? *
- 6. *
- 7. Governments are natural to humans
- 8. Controlling the state
- 9.
- 10. On the digital world breaking down governments’ control over the(-ir) states*
- 11. A beginning-of-time model fundamentally and irreversibly eroded: Leviathan’s demise*
- 1. *
- 2. *
- 3. Two basic questions*
- 4. Morality in the system
- 5.
- 6. The response to the who: monarchy, oligarchy or democracy
- 7. The response to the how: the tacit assumption behind monarchy, oligarchy and democracy*
- 8.
- 9. The most basic assumption of all: the analogue world
- 1. *
- 2. Social contract theory*
- 3. Against social contract theory*
- 4. Religion*
- 5. Other state justification theories
- 6. Utilitarianism*
- 7. Hegel’s idealism*
- 8. Marxism*
- 9. The welfare state*
- 10. State malaise*
- 11. The digital world*
- 1.
- 2. Creation of information
- 3. Storage and dissemination of information
- 4. Storage of information*
- 5. Dissemination of information*
- 6.
- 7. State legitimacy*
- 8.
- 9. Is control over these types of processing necessary? *
- 10.
- 11. Failed states
- 12. Does legitimacy give rise to platform rights?
- 1. *
- 2. *
- 3. Never a void*
- 4. How does a state die? *
- 5. What happens to a state after it dies?
- 6. State succession*
- 1. Sovereignty means control*
- 2. *
- 3.
- 4. Who else could claim sovereignty? The government*
- 5. Why would the government strive for sovereignty? *
- 6. *
- 7. Sovereignty in the digital world*
- 1. The territory of a state is its information processing environment
- 2.
- 3. Territory in the analogue world*
- 4. How state territoriality really works: site-specific locality is irrelevant*
- 5. Moving around in the analogue world*
- 6.
- 7.
- 8. Territory in the digital world*
- 9.
- 10. The link between control and location; the path from humans to individuals (and citizens) and to (today’s) users
- 11. Users (instead of owners)
- 12. The digital territory of a state*
- 13. What about artificial Beings?
- 14. Borders*
- 15. Interoperability and data portability*
- 16. State security and cybersecurity*
- 1. Nation*
- 2. *
- 3. *
- 4. Nationality
- 5. Are nations human-specific? *
- 1.
- 2. States are still in the ‘state of nature’ *
- 3.
- 4. International law and the UN*
- 5. *
- 6.
- 7. *
- 8. The EU as the platform for platforms
- 9.
- 10. Cosmopolitanism, and other (utopian) alternatives*
- 11. The EU*
- 12. Interoperability versus integration*
- 13. What the EU is and what it does
- 14. *
- 15.
- 16. Archipelagos enlarged*
- 17. Are archipelagos natural?
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
- 21. The differences between an archipelago and a federation—or an empire*
- 1.
- 2. Many laws? *
- 3. No law? *
- 4. No eternal law
- 5. *
- 6. *
- 7. *
- 8.
- 9. The digital world differs; A controlled environment*
- 10. *
- 1. Rights are not claims but permissions*
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 1. *
- 2.
- 3. The constitution*
- 4.
- 5. Platform rights
- 6. *
- 7. Equality*
- 8. Liberty*
- 9. Security (of information, not of the person)*
- 10.
- 11. Platform rights and natural rights*
- 12.
- 13.
- 14. Human rights in the digital world*
- 1. *
- 2.
- 3. Can morality be avoided altogether? *
- 4. On whether individuals should keep their promises*
- 5. On religion
- 1. Property is control over a dataset*
- 2. Property is an attribute of a dataset
- 3. Property is natural to all Beings (and, thus, is not a platform right)*
- 4. Property is not a pursuit for its own sake*
- 5. No property over humans*
- 6. Property is dependent on the state*
- 7. Property and sovereignty*
- 8. Appropriation*
- 9. Property in the digital world
- 10.
- 11.
- 12. On inequality*
- 1. *
- 2.
- 3.
- 1. *
- 2. Freedom is impossible to attain
- 3. Freedom is relative*
- 4. A human need to be free? *
- 5. *
- 6. The state is at the same time the source of and the basic impediment to human freedom *
- 7.
- 8. Liberty*
- 9. Liberty is also relative
- 10.
- 11. *
- 1. The individualisation of humans and the limits of this philosophy*
- 2.
- 3. Individualistic political theories*
- 4. The distinction between the public and the private spheres*
- 5. The inherent conundrum that individualistic theories have to deal with*
- 6.
- 7. *
- 8.
- 9. The digital world and the right to informational self-determination*
- 10.
- 11.
- 0. Prologue
- 1. Information
- 1.1. Material and immaterial information
- 2. Beings
- 2.1. Humans
- 3. Things
- 4. Processing
- 4.1. Reason
- 5. Need and opportunity
- 5.1. A need specific to humans
- 6. Control
- 7. State definition: States are information platforms for their citizens
- 7.1. Information platforms
- 8. States are natural to humans
- 8.1. Names
- 9. State formation: from word of mouth to the modern state
- 10. What states need
- 11. The nature of the state
- 12. The government
- 12.1. The political system
- 13. State justification
- 14. State legitimacy
- 15. State succession
- 16. Sovereignty
- 17. Territory and borders
- 18. Nation
- 19. Archipelago: where do the information platforms that are states live? The EU
- 20. Law
- 21. Rights
- 22. Human rights
- 23. Morality
- 24. Property
- 24.1. Intellectual property
- 25. Freedom and liberty
- 26. Liberalism
- Notes
- BibliographySeiten 479 - 502 Download Kapitel (PDF)
