there is some buzz about the concept of a
distributed autonomous corporation. I wanted to find out who invented the concept, but as these so called whitepapers floating around don't use scientific standards for citation I haven't been able to identify where the term comes from. google scholar doesn't return any reference on a keyword search.
Szabo wrote this paper called "Multinational Small Business " in 1993, which comes very close to the concept:
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/multi_small.html . So the best of my knowledge this is the source of the concept, which might have roots in earlier works of art. The idea is bit different, and more well thought of, in that in refers specifically to the multi-jurisdiction problems, and acknowledges that cooperations are legal constructions, not just bits on the internet.
The rise of virtual nations. Multinational small businesses might speak entirely English, Japanese, Mandarin, etc. Their employees might live primarily within a single cultural milieu, dispersed thru a large number of small ethnic communities around the world, keeping close culture-specific, multimedia communications links between the communities.
[...]
Businesses will learn to share the information needed to attract investment and sales, only to those investors and customers, without jeopardizing their legal status in any major market in the maze of obscure jurisdictions they operate in. The companies that first bring these capabilities to international small business at affordable prices stand to reap large fortunes. The new paradigm of smart contracts may provide the cornerstone for building these tools.