What do we mean when we talk about ‘the State’? Multiple polls show a growing disillusionment with the State and representative government as vehicles for progressive change, and particularly as means to tame capitalism, let alone as a basis for seeing beyond it. In a quick and readable format, Eric Laursen proposes thinking about the State in an entirely new way - not simply as government or legal institutions, but as humanity’s analogue to a computer operating system opening up a new interpretation of the system of governance that emerged in Europe five-hundred years ago and now drives almost every aspect of human society.