A system that generates and process binary (1 and 0) data.
Essentially this can be thought of anything tied to modern day computing since they use bits, which form bytes, as the basis.
It is the era that basically followed the electronic age. As the digital period arose, especially the introduction of the Internet, many aspects of society changed. Over time, we saw many goods that were once in physical form moved into the digital realm.
A few are:
- video
- music
- information
- photographs/pictures
Even money has transformed itself from something that was in the form of banknotes and coins to parts of digital ledgers. The monetary system today includes a digital communications network that is a mix of financial institutions that provide services along with payments.
This is the foundation for ledger based money.
Digital Economy
Since the introduction of the Internet, many predicted the rise of the digital economy. For many years it was termed the "new economy". This was the idea that the physical components of the economy would be replace with online activity. After roughly 3 decades, this appears to be the case.
One of the biggest changes was in finance. Much of the financial world operates online. Brokerage firms allow people to buy stocks, bonds, and derivatives through an application or website.
We saw an industry such as communications completely revamped as a result of digitization. People can communicate with people all over the world, mostly at no cost. Applications such as Zoom and Skype are now standard for many people.
One of the major changes is distribution of products that became digitized. Examples are music and software. This use to be produced on disc and physically delivered. In the digital world, these are simply downloaded from servers.
Network State
The advancement of technology along with the introduction of blockchain has people starting to theorize about the network state. This is the fact that digital ecosystems such as Facebook have become as powerful as many governments.
Blockchain is bringing decentralized node systems to the forefront. This means that decentralization can be applied to the network state.
The network state stems from the idea of social media having finance integrated throughout. This can be enhanced by the addition of cryptocurrency which allows for new business and ownership structures. Non-fungible tokens (NFT) are in the early days of experimentation.
This could alter funding in the future as value tied to cryptocurrency and the related assets grow in value. The network state will also likely see the tokenization of most real world assets along with existing financial products.