We are on the verge of witnessing the next epoch of human society, the digital age is ushering in a revolution of mass social engineering comparable in scale only to that of the development of organized religion. Faster than ever we are moving closer to a "post national" world. National borders and national identity will be increasingly inconsequential. Information and data are the commodities of the digital age. As mass society advances there will be a growing tendency for people to use networks to build communities, an economic model for companies is shifting from a few large operations to thousands of small operations, and the need for large areas will give way to increasing numbers of small local units to occupy. The networked digital world will operate with little direct physical infrastructure because it relies on information flows.
Big business and the big state have already embraced IT on many levels. While they have a keen interest in monitoring movements, intercepting calls and communications, and blocking websites, their most significant interest is to use digital communications to improve their central control structures, thus allowing a small minority within government and big business to manage the majority. Digital media makes the centralization of the state possible. The internet of things (IoT) will offer the last great push to the global management of human society. On a society-wide scale, and increasingly also on the individual, the digitization of the body/brain will turn humans into software applications without them knowing or even realizing it.