AI summaryⓘ
The authors build on their previous work by explaining why the idea of an "autonomous principal" (a self-governing digital identity) naturally follows from how data and actions happen in networks. They compare this shift to how physics changed when moving from Newtonian ideas to relativity, showing that traditional ways of managing identity assume everything happens at the same time globally, which isn’t true in complex systems. Instead, they argue state and identity are better seen as relationships evolving through ordered interactions, making the autonomous principal the only one who can define its own perspective. They also share new technology developed after 2023 that puts this idea into practice and discuss its impact on data sharing across borders.
autonomous principaldata governancedistributed information systemscausalityidentity managementglobal simultaneitycross-border data flowsagentic systemsrelativistic physics analogytransactional sovereignty
Authors
Philippe Page, Robert Mitwicki, Michal Pietrus
Abstract
The 2023 paper \emph{Distributed Governance: a Principal-Agent Approach to Data Governance} arXiv:2308.07280 introduced the autonomous principal as the locus of transactional sovereignty in digital ecosystems. This follow-up, Part 2, advances a structural argument for why that model is not a normative preference but a consequence of taking causality seriously in distributed information systems. Drawing an analogy with the transition from Newtonian to relativistic physics, we show that custodial identity management rests on an implicit assumption of global simultaneity that fails as soon as identity must operate across ecosystems, jurisdictions, and the offline/online boundary. Once that assumption is dropped, state ceases to be a noun held by a central authority and becomes a relation maintained between principals through causally ordered exchanges. The autonomous principal emerges as the only entity with standing to define its own reference frame. We report on technology built since 2023 that operationalises this view, and outline its consequences for cross-border data flows and agentic systems.