A related erasure-type issue, and one that’s a little harder to get your hands around, is the expectation of “the right to be invisible” – in other words, the right to ensure that your image isn’t stored or shared without your consent.

The very first photograph was taken in 1826, the view from the photographer’s window in France. No people are visible from what I can see on that fairly blurry shot, so personal privacy was safe, at least for the very brief time being. It wasn’t long, though, till group and individual portraits were all the rage.

How many times will your picture be taken today?

This year we’ll take more than 1.4 trillion pictures according to some estimates. And that doesn’t include passive, automated pictures ranging from street-level building security cameras to doorbell cameras, which is part of the challenge with asserting the right to be invisible. Passive cameras record what they see. Period. If you go outside, you will eventually be captured digitally. That picture of you taken at a random moment in time may sit someplace for a while or forever. No human being may ever see it unless they have a reason to look.

Can technology support the right to be invisible? Is it possible to demand your image be deleted if you don’t even know it’s been captured? Can security cameras be programmed to blur out the image of someone who has received permission to be invisible? I wouldn’t bet against very smart people figuring out these kinds of challenges. But there are bigger issues here. Who serves as the judge to allow you to opt out of today’s ubiquitous image capturing? Will it be like TSA pre-check programs, except those who pass a background check not only get through security quicker but the cameras around the world are turned off for them?

How far is too far?

We’re all aware of some compelling advantages to extensive image capturing. We’ll soon be able to monitor people’s health and safety with drones. We can prove guilt or innocence at a crime scene thanks to the bystander cameras, officer body cameras and traffic/street level cameras. We can pick up the trail of missing children (and shake our heads at porch pirates) thanks to doorbell cameras.

Then of course there’s the arguments against invisibility. Some folks have things to hide that we all need to know about. There’s a reason bank robbers wear masks. In fact, that’s why some people tell me they don’t care about being caught on tape: “I’m not doing anything wrong, so I don’t care.” By implication, though, they’re saying that those who want to be invisible do have something to hide. That’s not fair. Do privacy advocates need to justify their position? Is their concern, or even paranoia, about who’s sifting through the footage a good enough reason to insist on being invisible?

Technology constraints aside, should we have the right to insist on invisibility? Maybe COVID has solved this problem for those who don’t want to be seen. Just keep wearing your mask outdoors. After all, even my phone doesn’t recognize me now!

I am sure there’s something I haven’t included here, so please share your thoughts with me!

Large tech companies now wield more clout than most countries.

This becomes a critical issue when the needs of a country and the needs of a business collide. A prime example is when Facebook was caught off-guard with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the issue of privacy suddenly took center stage.

Few people truly understand privacy, and of those who do, none are seated in a position of global authority.

To understand the full privacy spectrum, we must also understand the politically popular term “transparency.” Many people today still lean towards having a radically transparent world, where, as the thinking goes, we will live in a much safer world if we all know everything about everybody.

However, the flaw in that logic is that if I know everything about someone, I’ll also know his or her bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and passwords. Suddenly we lose our ability to own things, and our ownership ability has become a foundational principle upon which the world operates.

For this and many other reasons, we need to maintain a privacy bubble around every person, but so far it hasn’t been defined. It hasn’t been defined legally, technologically, or culturally, and with so many new tech advances happening on a minute-by-minute basis, each new privacy policy will require constant updating.

From a public policy standpoint, this becomes a very dicey issue when individual countries decide their own policy. The privacy policy of the U.S. will likely be very different from the privacy policies of Sweden, Japan, Brazil, and Cambodia.

Since privacy is a topic that lives on the bleeding edge of emerging technology, very few people currently understand the implications of privacy with each new digital breakthrough.

If we leave it up to individual counties to decide, there simply aren’t enough privacy experts in the world to go around. If 180 countries develop 180 different privacy policies, we quickly create a very blurry privacy landscape.

But if there was a single global organization filled with all of the world’s top privacy experts, and individual countries had an active membership role, then this one organization could begin deciding privacy policies and standards for the world.

This is what I refer to as a “Fractal Organization” because each member country manages a fraction of its overall operation.

First a Little History

The term “nation-state” came into play in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia. This was an important turning point because countries transitioned from rogue protectorates to cultured political systems that recognized each other’s borders and were empowered to make deals with other nation-states.

Since 1648, countries, operating as nation-states, have become the most powerful entities on the planet. With large militaries to defend their interests and advanced monetary systems to build infrastructure, countries have become complex organisms with self-adapting properties.

However, when the Internet started providing borderless connectivity, we began seeing national systems transition into global systems. As the use of borders became less obvious, traditional ways of defining a country began to erode and the value of citizenship, less defined.

While countries struggle to maintain their role in the global community, people, as citizens of these nation states, have become far more mobile, wanting to be less confined by systems, rules, and geography.

So what comes next?

Fractal Organizations will sit at the intersection of national and global governance.

Paving the Way for Fractal Organizations

Using this to set the stage, let’s look at how our current nation-state could evolve.

Since technology is exceeding government’s ability to manage it, new global systems in the form of fractal organizations could emerge as a possible solution. Each fractal would be highly automated, and comes with its own management structure.

I think of them as fractals because each represents a tiny bit of order in an ocean of chaos. If fractals catch on, we will also see other new patterns of governance emerge.

Fractal Organizations will be positioned at the intersection of national and global governance.

In much the same way ICANN is the global authority for naming and numbering systems related to the Internet, the Privacy Fractal would establish itself as the global authority on privacy.

Fractal Organizations will serve as a check-and-balance for national governance, but only in a very limited scope.

Fractal Governance Defined

A Fractal Organization would represent a narrow spectrum of global authority managed by a board of directors comprised of directors from each member state. While it would remain outside the control of any individual nation, member nations would select their own experts to be representatives on the Fractal’s board.

As a general rule, Fractals will need to be politically neutral, industry agnostic, and represent the world as a whole rather than the interest of a single nation.

Some Fractals may be mandated by large international assemblies such as a G20 Summit while others will originate organically, recruiting member nations on their own.

Fractal Organizations will be funded through nation-based membership dues.

Once a Fractal is launched and reaches critical mass, somewhere in the range of 20 member states, it will begin to serve as the default authority in all matters related to its scope of governance.

Types of Fractal Organizations

The full range of possible Fractal Organizations is only limited by our imagination, but the earliest ones will be designed to address the most divisive problems in the world today.

Since very few countries understand how to deal with cryptocurrencies, we may see a “Cryptocurrency Fractal” mandated at the next Global Summit. But that may be too broad of a topic and a separate authority may be needed for Bitcoin, Etherium, Ripple, Monero, and each of the cryptocurrencies gaining traction around the world.

With the concept of ownership being muddied by governments and police claiming authority to seize property, an “Ownership Fractal” may be needed to sort out all of the issues related to ownership around the world. Simply claiming rights based on the “spoils of war theory” is not a good way to manage disputes.

Fractal Organizations have the potential to cover a wide range of topics from concrete to esoteric. Here are a few possibilities to help stimulate your thinking:

• Global Accounting Standard
• Business Ethics
• Time Zones
• Nanotech Industry Standards
• Incarceration Standards
• Ocean Pollution
• Asteroid Mining
• Global Marijuana Policy
• Global Language Archive
• Patents and Intellectual Property
• GPS
• Cross-Border Taxes
• Telepresence Networks
• Identity Standards
• Wind Rights

Over time, turf battles between nations will be replaced by turf battles over the range and limits of Fractal authority.

Will new Fractal Organizations solve today’s problems with technology oversight?

Final Thoughts

There are many benefits to having separate countries around the world. On one hand they preserve national cultures, but at the same time help spawn new industries.

However, the biggest benefit is the competition that takes place between countries. This nation-to-nation competition is pushing our standard of living to increasingly higher levels.

Done correctly, countries will welcome many aspects of fractal governance because it demonstrates attention to growing problem areas. People will have confidence in these expert-run systems as opposed to the political generalists, with lobbyists in the background, that are making decisions today.

Admittedly, this is still a half-baked idea at best. My descriptions are crude and the overall concepts are still rough. So, does this sound like the direction we’re headed or am I way off base? I’d love to hear your thoughts.