Understanding and managing conflict of physical sovereignty is challenging but possible when using maps.
Understanding and managing conflict of digital sovereignty is challenging but possible when using maps.
Try doing either at scale without maps. Hint : you can't.
I do love people trying to understand digital / technological / economic and political sovereignty through the power of stories. If there's a landscape and you're competing over it then take a suggestion from the old Egyption Kingdom (3000 BC) ... use a map.
X : I don't understand the map connection.
Me : With physical sovereignty, you have multiple collectives with different values fighting over a landscape that you can visualise with a map to both communicate and learn from.
Me : With digital sovereignty, you have multiple collectives with different values fighting over a landscape that you can visualise with a map to both communicate and learn from.
Me : We decided in the military field to progress from using stories to using maps to communicate and learn from about 5,000 years ago. In the world of business, technology and poltics, we're still using stories ...
Me : ... you can see this in the digital sovereignty space where there are rarely maps but an awful lot of effort going into finding a description .... it's like not using a map to explain the physical sovereignty of Greece but trying to find the perfect description of its land.
X : Is this just a problem with sovereignty?
Me : No, it is rife across many fields. We have landscapes which we don't map but try to use stories instead. Another example is Culture where anthropologists have been trying to agree on a definition for over one hundred years.
X : I don't see culture on that map.
Me : That's because it's all culture. It's a visual representation of culture, a map of what's involved.
X : Is that right?
Me : All maps are imperfect. All models are wrong. It's not about being right, it's simply about better maps.
X : Why haven't I see these before?
Me : It's slowly spreading, it's appearing in pockets but remember what it's up against.
X : Explain?
Me : The world is run by stories and storytellers. Maps threaten this, they allow for challenge. Hence there will be inertia against change.
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