NOTE: What's funny about the following is that my team built and deployed a global bot network back in 99-01. We put bot servers in 54 cities on 6 continents that gathered 20 million measurements every day, that we replicated back to our central server farm in real-time.
Here's a brilliant video presentation by the author Daniel Suarez (Daemon and Freedom) on the rapid proliferation of computer automated decision making (see the NOTE below on bots).
Daniel answers the question: how does the globally dominant economic system operate at the root and branch without human oversight or governance? It builds itself a body in the name of economic necessity and efficiency. Specifically, an intricate system of trillions of morally neutral software bots that can tirelessly watch everything and execute on its decisions. If you were wondering what the successor to the nation-state at the global level would be, as the nation-state recedes, this is it.
NOTE: Dan talks about "bots" in his presentation. Basically, bots are software that gather information and make decisions automatically (ad infinitum). Bots are everywhere. They make decisions that impact our lives on a daily basis (from whether we get a mortgage or we are put on a no-fly-list or keep up with inflation on a stock based retirement fund). Since bots are software, they can be copied endlessly (self-replication) and can work tirelessly.