MetaDomain: A New Infrastructure for Cognitive Economies
The transition from industrial models to generative, knowledge-based systems invites reflection on the emerging paradigm and on the cognitive and relational architectures capable of supporting it.
Industrial economies and new cognitive economies now coexist within the same landscape, while following profoundly different logics. The former are organised around production, standardisation and the exchange of limited resources. The latter grow through knowledge, relationships and the capacity to generate unforeseen possibilities.
In his article published in Agenda Digitale, Paolo Zanenga, President of Diotima Society, takes this transformation as the starting point for introducing the concept of the MetaDomain: a cognitive and technological space in which explicit and implicit knowledge, distributed resources and collective visions can connect and generate shared value.
The change described also concerns the way we interpret reality. Models based on the separation between subject and object, organisation and environment, technology and society are increasingly struggling to represent complex, interdependent and continuously evolving systems. Knowledge emerges more and more from the connections between people, experiences, digital systems and contexts; its value depends on the ecosystem’s ability to recognise it, interpret it and transform it into action.
Artificial intelligence, Web3, distributed systems and tokenisation can become enabling technologies within a broader architecture. They can help make visible cognitive and relational assets that traditional metrics struggle to detect, creating new opportunities for businesses, institutions and territories.
The same question runs through Diotima Society’s research and design activities: how can we recognise the value generated by relationships and build environments capable of learning alongside the ecosystems in which they operate? The applications developed within businesses, territories and environmental systems translate this theoretical framework into processes of observation, design and governance.
Zanenga’s contribution provides the coordinates for understanding the MetaDomain as the expression of a deeper change: an epistemic, economic and institutional transition that is reshaping the relationship between knowledge, value and the capacity for transformation.
Read the full article in Agenda Digitale: “Il metadominio: così sta cambiando società ed economia”
Nadia Simionato - Diotima Society