There is a major ‘meta’ problem which is that of governance which impacts on nearly every aspect of modern life.

Progress in information technologies creates new challenges in governance in that networked technologies blur the boundaries within organizations, between organizations and indeed between the local, regional, global and national.

Within technology the role of ICANN and global governance of the internet is an example of such a challenge. The ability to protect children from online exploitation is at the social rather than the technical end of the governance challenge. The virtual global task force is an example of how industry and governments can work together to handle these kinds of concerns. Similar actions on spam and phishing point to new ways of handling governance matters

These technological challenges spread out into wider society as technology becomes more pervasive. The permeability of national boundaries leads to challenges on the tax base for transactions, jurisdictional issues in law and the governance of global corporations.

The invention of the limited liability company was one of the great innovations of the industrial society. We need an innovation of this impact to help us learn new governance models for the knowledge society.