Instead of government-in-exile, we can now have roaming governments, with no physical land, but with laws and services operating within a framework. It is government without a country and it puts everyone on equal footing when trading and building a reputation. Do we even need nation states any more?
Perhaps we will see the first virtual governments soon, existing solely as an interface to facilitate identification, arbitration and trust. It could be done over the internet and be a real example of virtual democracy. Looking forward to it.
I have always thought that we'll have some internet courts of arbitration that would cut through the red tape of dealing with many jurisdictions. But can we have sovereign states that exist only in the internet? I doubt - maybe there will be some ingenious crypto systems that would make the systems more and more independent form the physical servers (in a way like the bitcoin system) - but eventually still the physical states will always be able to switch off the virtual states if they wanted to and if they cooperated.
The crucial question here is if the virtual state can do anything that would be in conflict with the state that has jurisdiction over its servers.
I think that with some advanced cryptography this can work to some extent (with servers behind tor and distributed in a manner that there is no one god-admin) - but in the end http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/on-the-high-seas-of-the-h...
This sort of happens with shipping, corporate and domain registries. One day Tuvalu will sink, but its domain is too valuable to abandon and will continue. Hardly anyone can point to Liberia on a map, but over 10% of the worlds shipping is registered there^. The CEO of HSBC is paid through a Swiss bank account belonging to a Panamanian nominee company.
Facilitating non-identification, unaccountability, lopsided arbitration schemes, and evasive business is big money.
^"There" is of course an office in London, not actual Liberia.
Perhaps we will see the first virtual governments soon, existing solely as an interface to facilitate identification, arbitration and trust. It could be done over the internet and be a real example of virtual democracy. Looking forward to it.