About

Digital Personhood explores two related structural questions.

The first is the prerequisite of human jurisdiction. Before questions of privacy, ownership, or digital rights can be addressed, a more basic condition must exist: whether a human being possesses standing and authority within the systems that process their life. If consequence attaches to the individual while jurisdiction does not, the imbalance is structural. Any durable digital order must begin by resolving whether jurisdiction follows the person or bypasses them.

The second is the necessity of sovereignty in personal digital information. If jurisdiction is recognized as person-bound, then the digital extensions of human life cannot be treated as free institutional resources. Personal digital information, behavioral traces, and identity signals remain tied to the originating individual. Under those conditions, sovereignty over personal digital information becomes a structural requirement rather than a policy choice.

Jurisdiction comes first. Sovereignty in personal digital information follows from it.

This work examines both conditions as they already exist, where they fail, and what becomes possible when they are treated as prerequisites rather than aspirations. It does not propose legislation or institutional programs. It maps structural relationships and their consequences across legal, economic, and technical domains.

The material is presented as a set of interconnected papers and reference sections. Each may be read independently, but all proceed from the same premise: that a stable digital world must take its bearing from the person whose life it processes.