Analogue Borders

The New Borders of the Global Economy: Who Gets a Visa? Digital Infrastructure and the New Paradigm of Participation in the Global Economy

/the-new-borders-of-the-global-economy-who-gets-a-visa-digital-infrastructure-and-the-new-paradigm-of-participation-in-the-global-economy

If you wanted to understand a country's wealth or identify the economic borders of the world hundreds of years ago, all you had to do was look at its ports, customs houses, and the ships docked at its harbors. Whoever controlled these gateways determined who was allowed to enter the market and who was left outside. Today, however, a profound transformation has taken place. Customs houses and commercial terminals still stand where they have always stood, but they are no longer the principal instruments of economic power. A significant portion of the world's economic borders has moved to a place invisible to the naked eye, into software algorithms, cloud infrastructure, and global standards for data exchange. The world's economic borders have not disappeared. Rather, they have shifted from the physical, analogue world into digital networks, and today it is computer code that issues our visa for entry into the global economy.