The examples provided from the Gilded Age caution that a similar inflection point is lurking today as vertical regulatory frameworks experience inequitable adjustments to information and communication technology. Modern innovations in telecommunications parallel the dramatic changes to individual security experienced between 1880-1918.[1] Globally, instant internet access, increasingly delivered wirelessly, connects billions with big data, artificial intelligence, social media, and more. Infrastructure for cellular networks and data farms for servers exploded across communities. Endless apps, streamed entertainment, and avatars are available at any hour, in every nook of personal space. Facial recognition, smart homes, and video telephony software spread globally as COVID infected the world. With such rapid advancements in information and communication technology, vertical regulatory frameworks within nations severed from individual security. A sense of common place, custom, and beliefs strained under overwhelming connectivity that lacked clarity of what belonging means.[2]
As discussed in more detail later, vertical regulatory frameworks must adapt for this reduction in individual security as telecommunications intrudes into the selective privacy necessary for forming identity. But today’s vertical regulatory frameworks also integrate into a global economy through a much stronger horizontal regulatory framework than in the early 1900’s. Formal international institutions such as the United Nations and World Trade Organization interlock nations. Therefore, as social contracts shift, nations must navigate the complexity of altering both the vertical and horizontal regulatory frameworks simultaneously.
In adjusting both national and international legal norms, a nation risks its sovereignty because the government is exposed to internal and external resistance. This creates a disincentive to change. But familiar echoes of individual insecurity like environmentalism and nationalism have surfaced and create a stark choice: fix security for individuals under your nationality or falter as a nation. Environmentalism has ascended as the environmental impact of producing the energy and devices demanded for this massive increase in connectivity exploits inequities between nations.[3] Nationalism has risen as migration creeps upward in the search for individual security.[4] A larger social disruption has occurred within Europe as Russia and Ukraine wage war.[5] In response, nations must address vertical and horizontal regulatory norms and restore a politically acceptable standard of individual security judiciously and expeditiously.
[1] See George Constable and Bob Somerville, A Century of Innovation: Twenty Engineering Achievements that Transformed Our Lives (Joseph Henry Press, 2003) (noting Electrification was called “the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th Century”).
[2] See Marilyn Cornelius and Thomas N. Robinson, Global identity and environmental sustainability: Related attitudes and actions 5-6 (2011) (unpublished manuscript) (on file with Precourt Energy Efficiency Center at Stanford University); Gerald Casper, The Concept of National Citizenship in the Contemporary World: Identity or Volition?, Bucerius Law School, 1 (2008).
[3] See Oliver C. Ruppel, Climate Change: International Law and Global Governance: Legal Responses and Global Responsibility 75-76, 80-82 (Oliver C. Ruppel, et al. eds., 2013); Will Steffen, Paul J. Crutzen and John R. McNeill, The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?, 36 Ambio 614, 618-19 (Dec. 2007).
[4] See Ashok Swain, Increasing Migration Pressure and Rising Nationalism: Implications for Multilateralism and SDG Implementation, 2, 17-19 (United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs, Policy Analysis Jun. 2019).
[5] See https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/24/world/russia-attacks-ukraine (last visited Apr. 22, 2022).
