This article is about how LingoAI’s Holons and Personal Ontologies connect meaning, rights and value through Token Switching.
Introduction
As AI inference becomes available across borders through APIs, with services priced by token usage, and as tokens appear in both language models and digital value networks, two previously distinct worlds are beginning to connect: one concerned with knowledge and intelligence, the other with rights and value.
But as artificial intelligence learns to understand language, accumulate memories, use tools and act on our behalf, a question more fundamental than “How large is the model?” or “How cheap are its tokens?” begins to emerge:
Who will own our data? Who will control the AI that represents us? And who will decide how our knowledge, memories and digital identities may be used?
Cross-border AI inference services can make intelligence more accessible. Token transactions can support service procurement, the transfer of rights and value settlement. Yet if personal data, memory and intelligence remain concentrated within a small number of platforms, even more capable and affordable AI may leave humanity with less autonomy in the digital world.
LingoAI’s proposed answer is the Holon: a sovereign intelligence unit.
A Holon is more than an AI agent, data account, digital identity or knowledge graph. It uses a Personal Ontology to organize identity, memory, knowledge and relationships, with the ambition of becoming a fundamental sovereign intelligence unit of the next Internet.
Every person, organization and nation should be able to possess its own data, knowledge, AI and value systems. At the same time, these entities should be able to connect without surrendering sovereignty, forming higher levels of collective intelligence.
Within the Grand Unified Theory of Web3.0, proposed by Henry Wang (王启亨), this connection points toward Token Switching: a framework for linking semantics, authorization, intelligence and value in verifiable exchanges among sovereign participants.
Cross-border AI services address how intelligence is supplied globally. Token transactions address how services and value circulate. Token Switching asks a further question: how can these exchanges take place while respecting the intentions and data sovereignty of the people involved?
This is a journey from philosophy to technology, from Personal Ontology to Sovereign AI, and from personal sovereignty to the collective intelligence of humanity.
- Holon: A Whole in Itself, and Part of a Greater Whole
The term Holon was introduced by Arthur Koestler in 1967. It combines the Greek word holos, meaning “whole,” with the suffix -on, suggesting a part or particle.
It describes a structure found throughout nature and society:
An entity can be both a relatively autonomous whole and part of a greater whole.
A cell has its own boundary and life processes, yet it is also part of a body. A person has an independent consciousness, yet belongs to a family, community, nation and humanity. A word carries meaning, yet enters sentences and knowledge systems to express something richer.
Koestler called the nested order formed by Holons a Holarchy. In LingoAI’s interpretation, the emphasis is not on top-down domination, but on an organic order formed by many relatively autonomous units.
Each Holon has two complementary tendencies:
First, to preserve its identity, boundaries and integrity. Second, to connect with other Holons and participate in the formation of a greater whole.
This reveals a central tension in digital civilization:
Humanity needs both personal sovereignty and collective cooperation. People should neither be absorbed by centralized platforms nor remain isolated in disconnected data silos.
- How LingoAI Redefines the Holon
Within LingoAI, we use the Chinese rendering Quanyuan (全元) for Holon: quan emphasizes completeness, while yuan expresses its role as a constituent unit of something greater.
The philosophical concept thereby acquires a practical technological meaning:
A LingoAI Holon is an autonomous intelligence unit with an individual or organization as its sovereign principal. It integrates identity, data, memory, knowledge, value, intention and agency, while collaborating and evolving with other Holons through verifiable authorization.
A complete Holon includes at least seven interconnected dimensions:
- Identity: Who am I?
- Data: Which data belongs to me?
- Memory: What have I experienced?
- Ontology: How do I understand myself and the world?
- Intelligence: What can my AI understand and accomplish?
- Intention: What do I want my AI to do on my behalf?
- Value: How should my data, knowledge and contributions be rewarded?
Many AI agents today operate within a platform, primarily helping that platform or its users complete particular tasks.
The Holon’s design goal goes further. It belongs to the person or organization it represents, can accumulate data and knowledge over time, understands its principal’s goals and acts on their behalf under explicit authorization.
A Holon is therefore not simply “an AI assistant assigned to a user by a platform.” It is:
Intelligence owned by the user, authorized by the user and designed to represent the user’s interests.
- Personal Ontology: Enabling AI to Understand Who We Are
Today’s Internet contains enormous amounts of information about a person, yet rarely understands that person as a whole.
Search history sits on one platform, social relationships on another. Medical information remains with hospitals, educational records with schools, work files within enterprise systems, and assets and transaction histories across financial institutions.
These fragments are disconnected. Individuals struggle to manage them coherently, while AI sees only partial pictures.
Through personal data spaces, semantic technologies and Personal Ontology, LingoAI seeks to organize fragmented information into a machine-readable knowledge structure under the individual’s control.
A Personal Ontology is more than a collection of data. It is a dynamic knowledge network describing a person’s relationships with the world, including:
- Who am I?
- What capabilities do I possess?
- Whom do I know?
- Which projects have I participated in?
- What matters to me?
- Which data have I authorized for which purposes?
- What are my long-term goals?
- Within what boundaries may my AI act on my behalf?
Only when AI can interpret the meaning and relationships behind data can it evolve from a one-off question-answering tool into a Holon that serves a person’s long-term goals.
- The Grand Unified Theory of Web3.0: Uniting Data Sovereignty and Value Sovereignty
The Holon is not an isolated product concept. It is grounded in the Grand Unified Theory of Web3.0, proposed by Henry Wang.
Henry Wang coined and introduced the term “Web3.0” in 2003, subsequently articulating the data and value architecture of the next Internet through this formula:
Web3.0 = Data3.0 + Finance3.0
Data3.0 addresses sovereignty over data, identity, knowledge and AI. Finance3.0 addresses sovereignty over value, assets, incentives and transactions.
Web3.0 has frequently been conflated with a crypto-centric interpretation of Web3, as though the next Internet were defined only by blockchains, digital assets or decentralized finance.
But if the Internet changes who owns value without changing who controls data and AI, genuine digital sovereignty remains out of reach.
Within this theory, a complete Web3.0 must therefore include both:
Data3.0: enabling people to own their data and intelligence.
Finance3.0: enabling people to own their digital value and economic rights.
The Holon is where these two dimensions converge:
In Data3.0, the Holon possesses data, memory, ontology and AI. In Finance3.0, it possesses rights, contributions, assets and value-settlement capabilities.
Data rights, AI rights and value rights can thereby be brought together within one sovereign participant.
- Token: Both a Linguistic Unit and a Representation of Value
Henry Wang’s framework highlights the dual meaning of “Token” across artificial intelligence and blockchain:
In Data3.0, a Token is a linguistic token. In Finance3.0, a Token represents digital rights and value.
In large language models, language, knowledge and information are encoded as tokens. These are fundamental computational units through which models process and generate language and other content; their meaning depends on context.
In blockchain systems, tokens can represent assets, rights, contributions and incentives. They are important units for the circulation and settlement of digital value.
These uses appear to belong to different technical fields, yet correspond to two important flows of the next Internet:
Linguistic tokens carry meaning. Economic tokens carry value.
From this perspective, what is sometimes called “AI token exports” is primarily the cross-border supply of inference services: users in one country call a model service and pay according to token usage.
“Token transactions,” however, require a distinction between contexts. In AI services, they may refer to purchasing and billing for token credits or inference services. In blockchain systems, they involve the transfer of tokens and the rights those tokens represent.
Linguistic tokens and economic tokens are not inherently equivalent. But the use of AI services, authorization of data contributions and settlement of value can be coordinated within a connected exchange process.
This is the starting point for moving from the dual meaning of tokens toward Token Switching.
As Data3.0 and Finance3.0 converge, a Token can be understood within this framework as more than a linguistic unit or a digital asset. It can become a Tongyuan (通元): an exchange unit connecting semantics, permissions, proof and value.
Such a unit can link or express:
- What data or knowledge does it represent?
- Which Holon did it originate from?
- What authorization has been granted?
- Who may use it, and under which conditions?
- Who contributed to its creation?
- How should its use generate incentives and settlement?
The “meaning” processed by AI and the “value” represented through blockchain can thereby participate in an interconnected Internet exchange framework.
- From Packet Switching to Token Switching
An essential foundation of the Internet is Packet Switching.
It solves a fundamental problem: how to divide information into packets and transmit those packets across a network from one machine to another.
Packet Switching connected computers and enabled the Information Internet.
Henry Wang has proposed and defined an exchange model for the next Internet:
Token Switching—Tongyuan Switching (通元交换).
Where Packet Switching transports bytes and data packets, Token Switching concerns exchanges involving:
- Semantics;
- Data usage rights;
- Identity and authorization;
- Knowledge and intelligent capabilities;
- Proofs of contribution;
- Rights and value.
Packet Switching answers:
How does information travel from one machine to another?
Token Switching asks:
How can meaning, rights, intelligence and value move credibly among sovereign participants?
The proposed evolution can be summarized in two statements:
Packet Switching connects machines to form the Information Internet.
Token Switching connects Holons to form an Internet of Intelligence and Value.
Token Switching does not replace packet switching at the underlying network layer. It explores a higher-level exchange mechanism that connects semantics, authorization and value.
For cross-border AI services and token transactions, the question is not only “How much was used, and how much was paid?” It also becomes: “Who authorized what? Which uses are permitted? How are contributions verified? How is value distributed?”
The Holon is the sovereign intelligence participating in an exchange. The Tongyuan is the exchange unit connecting meaning and value. Holons collaborate through Token Switching.
- How Holons Collaborate
If Tokens are exchange units of the next Internet, Holons are the sovereign participants that initiate, interpret, authorize and receive those exchanges.
A complete Holon interaction could unfold as follows:
A person expresses a goal to their Holon. The Holon interprets that intention through the person’s ontology and long-term memory. An authorization system determines which data may be accessed. Other Holons provide relevant knowledge, models, data or services. Provenance, permissions and usage records are preserved throughout. Contributors receive the rights or rewards established by the agreed rules. With the user’s consent, the results become part of the person’s evolving knowledge.
Consider a request to use an overseas AI inference service. In this design, the Personal Ontology helps the Holon identify the relevant meaning and context. The authorization mechanism determines which information may be provided to the service operator. Service usage and fees enter the appropriate metering and settlement process.
Cross-border inference supplies intelligent capabilities. Token transactions support the circulation of services and rights. The Token Switching framework seeks to connect these activities with user intentions, usage permissions and contribution records.
Personal Ontology helps AI understand “What do I need?” Authorization constrains “Which data may be used for which purposes?” Token Switching connects “How do we collaborate and distribute value?”
Together, these functions form a continuing cycle:
Data produces meaning. Meaning informs intelligence. Intelligence guides action. Action creates value. Value supports the creation of new knowledge.
The future Holon Marketplace should therefore be more than an app store selling AI tools.
It should become an open market in which sovereign intelligences participate, enabling authorized and trustworthy exchanges of data, knowledge, models, tasks, computing capabilities and professional services.
Within this system, Earn by Data does not mean asking people to sell their privacy.
Its intended meaning is:
Individuals retain data sovereignty while authorizing their data, knowledge and capabilities to participate in value creation—and share fairly in the resulting benefits.
- From Personal Holons to Collective Human Intelligence
A Holon can belong to a person, but also to a family, enterprise, university, community, city or nation.
Personal Holons can collaborate around shared goals to form community Holons. Community and institutional Holons can participate in national Sovereign AI ecosystems. Holons across countries and civilizations can collaborate through common protocols.
This does not require all data to be uploaded into a super-platform. Nor does it require a single supermodel to control everyone.
The objective is:
To enable distributed sovereign intelligence to collaborate under shared rules.
A meaningful national Sovereign AI ecosystem should involve more than a government possessing a domestically developed large model. It should certainly mean more than collecting all citizens’ data into a single system.
In LingoAI’s vision, such an ecosystem should bring together:
* Personal Holons owned by citizens;
* Organizational Holons owned by enterprises and institutions;
* Local-language and cultural ontologies;
* Sovereign national data spaces;
* Locally controllable models and computing infrastructure;
* Lawful authorization, auditing and governance mechanisms;
* Open protocols for cooperation with other countries on equal terms.
Sovereign AI should therefore not become another form of centralized control.
It should instead be understood as:
An intelligent community in which individuals, institutions and nations preserve their respective sovereignty while remaining capable of governance, verification and collaboration.
- Beginning in The Gambia: Sovereign AI and Data Infrastructure for the Global South
If Holons serve only a small number of technologically advanced regions, they cannot become next-generation Internet infrastructure for humanity.
Many languages, cultures and communities remain poorly represented in mainstream AI. Countries across the Global South face not only gaps in local data infrastructure, but also the extraction of local data by external platforms, inadequate rewards for local knowledge and the further marginalization of local languages.
The Global South must not remain merely a supplier of raw data or a passive market for AI products developed elsewhere.
Affordable intelligence delivered through cross-border inference services should therefore become a tool for building local sovereign capabilities—not the endpoint of digital development.
Communities need more than access to model APIs. They need to develop the ability to organize local knowledge, govern data permissions, cultivate technical expertise and share in the value created.
Holons and Personal Ontologies are central to LingoAI’s exploration of this transition.
LingoAI Co-Founder and CEO Una Wang, together with Poncelet Ileleji, Secretary-General of the Gambia Internet Governance Forum and lead of Jokkolabs Banjul, is beginning this sovereign AI and data infrastructure work in the Republic of The Gambia, with a vision extending to the Global South and the Global Majority.
Una Wang summarizes the vision: “The Global Majority should not remain merely a source of raw data or a market for AI developed elsewhere. Beginning in The Gambia with Poncelet Ileleji, we are building a pathway for communities to own their languages, data, AI and digital future. Sovereign Holons will allow local intelligence to remain locally governed while contributing to the collective intelligence of humanity.”
The significance of this cooperation is not to bring another centralized AI platform into Africa. It is to co-build with local communities:
* Local-language data and cultural ontologies for Mandinka, Wolof, Fula and other languages;
* Personal and institutional data spaces under their own control;
* Sovereign models and intelligent agents suited to local conditions;
* Mechanisms for establishing data rights, authorization, privacy protection and accountable use;
* Holon ecosystems developed jointly by local builders and communities;
* AI infrastructure connecting education, healthcare, agriculture and public services;
* Open networks that enable global cooperation while preserving national data sovereignty.
The Gambia is therefore more than a project location. It may become the starting point for a different path of digital development:
From The Gambia to West Africa. From West Africa to the Global South. From the Global South to the Global Majority.
- Every Language Is an Irreplaceable Part of Human Intelligence
Language is more than raw material for training models.
Every language embodies a community’s distinctive ways of observing nature, organizing society, expressing emotion and understanding the world.
Mandinka, Wolof, Fula, Swahili and thousands of other low-resource languages should not be treated merely as data categories waiting to be “covered” by mainstream AI.
They are unique Holons within humanity’s knowledge systems.
If future AI is built primarily on a small number of languages and cultures, it may possess extraordinary computational capabilities while representing only part of human civilization.
Genuine collective intelligence does not mean requiring everyone to use the same centralized supermodel.
It means:
Allowing different languages, cultures and ways of knowing to preserve their integrity while becoming capable of mutual understanding, equal collaboration and shared creation.
Human collective intelligence is therefore not equivalent to a single supermodel.
It is more likely to emerge from:
Sovereign Holons + Semantic Interoperability + Collective Intentionality.
- From Human Intelligence Toward Cosmic Intelligence
Holon theory also invites a longer-term perspective.
From particles, atoms and molecules to cells, living organisms, human beings and societies, complex systems form larger wholes from smaller ones. New capabilities may emerge at each level.
Individual cells do not possess human consciousness, yet together they form a human being capable of thought. Individuals have their own intelligence, yet interconnected societies can produce collective cognitive capabilities beyond those of any one person.
Following this line of development, Holons may extend from personal intelligence to community, national and collective human intelligence.
In the future, they may also connect AI systems, robots, urban infrastructure, ecosystems, Earth-observation systems and even interplanetary intelligence networks.
“Cosmic intelligence” is not a claim that the universe possesses a scientifically established unified consciousness. It is a possibility for the future:
Autonomous intelligences of different forms and scales may preserve their integrity while connecting through shared semantics, trusted protocols and value coordination to form an expanding intelligence network.
This would not be a cosmic super-brain controlling everything.
It would be an open intelligence ecosystem without an absolute center, formed by countless sovereign Holons.
- Holon: The Minimum Sovereign Unit of Intelligence
Koestler originally used Holons to explain life, organizations and complex systems.
LingoAI seeks to build on this philosophical foundation through three transitions.
First, from a philosophical concept describing complex systems to operational systems of identity, data, ontology, AI and authorization.
Second, from conventional organizational hierarchies to collaboration among sovereign participants whose involvement can be chosen, exited, verified and audited.
Third, from individual intelligence to an evolution of collective intelligence involving many languages, cultures and forms of intelligence.
LingoAI therefore proposes a new definition:
The Holon is the minimum sovereign unit of intelligence and a fundamental building block of collective wisdom.
With Personal Ontology as its semantic core, the Holon aims to help people manage their own identity, data, memory, knowledge, AI and value.
Cross-border inference services make intelligent capabilities available internationally. Token transactions support service procurement and the circulation of rights. Token Switching, as defined by Henry Wang, explores how these exchanges can be connected to participants’ intentions, authorization, proof and value distribution.
Within Henry Wang’s Grand Unified Theory of Web3.0, Data3.0 and Finance3.0 jointly provide the foundation for this sovereign intelligence network.
The goal is not merely to make AI affordable. It is to enable people to retain sovereignty while using AI, contributing data and collaborating with others.
The framework can be summarized through three relationships:
Web3.0 = Data3.0 + Finance3.0
Holon = Data Sovereignty + Semantic Intelligence + Autonomous Agency + Value Rights
Sovereign Holons + Token Switching + Collective Intentionality = Human Collective Intelligence
The future of artificial intelligence should not require humanity to surrender all data and decision-making power to a more powerful center.
A future worth building would allow every person, language, community and civilization to possess its own sovereign intelligence—and allow these intelligences to understand and collaborate with one another without sacrificing freedom or erasing difference.
Packet Switching connected machines. Token Switching will connect meaning and value. Holons connect sovereign intelligence.
From one person’s data sovereignty to a nation’s Sovereign AI; from the initiative beginning in The Gambia to infrastructure co-built by the Global Majority; and from collective human intelligence toward the more distant possibilities of cosmic intelligence—this is the path LingoAI Holon seeks to open.
Give every person a sovereign Holon. Connect every Holon through meaning. Allow intelligence to evolve without surrendering freedom.
From Personal Sovereignty to Collective Intelligence—and Beyond.
