The traditional models of producing order (governance)
In geo-states order tends to come from a chain of command which information flows from the bottom to the top. Orders flow from the top to the bottom. The person at the top deemed the leader, the President, is in the position to be the commander of the troops.
In traditional corporations order also tends to come from a chain of command in which knowledge flows from the bottom to the top and commands flow from the top to the bottom.
The problem with the traditional models is that in a world of increasing complexity the attention of those at the top is very scarce. Good ideas which are generated at the bottom might never flow to the top because of filters. Knowledge generated at the bottom might not reach the top because of attention scarcity. As a result those at the top increasing have to rely on expert advisers or on technologies which provide decision support.
Order from process in digital space
In cyber-states order comes from process. The process comes from the algorithms encoded into the fabric of the cyber-state. When Larry Lessig said “Code is Law” he was revealing that process produces order in digital space and code is what represents the algorithms of digital space that govern process.
In Distributed Collaborative Organizations order also comes from process. If the DCO is built up around a blockchain then the DCO is governed by those algorithms, which encourage all participants to follow a certain set of processes which inherently produce the order we see.
This is similar to how ant colonies, bee hives, and other organic structures have order if you look closely at the distributed rule set but to the casual observer who does not study insects it might look completely chaotic. These algorithms provide the mechanisms which allow for stigmergy to shape the behavior of the swarm. All of this can be encoded into a series of smart contracts which can allow the swarm to be self governing, and to be potentially more scalable and effective at governing because of swarm intelligence which can help solve the problem of attention scarcity.
Governance by software protocol
Digital space is holonic. Every computer in digital space is a node. Every node in digital space could be called a peer for example. In human terms we could call it F2F (friend to friend) or N2N (neighbor to neighbor). If we look at Bittorrent as an example then we can see that a node can be in more than one role at a time so the node can be both a seeder and a leecher. It is the share ratio which governs the network because everyone in the network can be rewarded or punished depending on whether they meet a minimum threshold of the share ratio.
The Bittorrent example reveals that you can create order through mathematics, algorithms, ultimately making the process more important than the nodes. For this reason you do not need a leadership to create whitelists and blacklists of who can get what but instead you can have a decentralized rule set, a process which everyone knows and follows just by downloading the software itself. As a result by using the software you’re subscribing to the process and the software is only able to interact with others following the same process which produces order from adherence to software protocol.