In "Google Earth and the Nation State: Sovereignty in the age of new media" Sangeet Kumar asks an extremely relevant and important question for modern nation states to consider, "What would sovereignty in this new global dispensation look like?" (the dispensation being the balance between post-national global order - which includes new media and blasting of time/space limits - and the modern nation state system).
When I read this question, I paused and thought about what our future may look like. We've gone from clan to tribe to feudalism to monarchy to nation state....what will be the next chapter in the world history books of future high school students? Will we be individuals connected to our alliances only by online networks? By, what Kumar describes as "associations and alliances that transcend geography and territory by forming loose, horizontal pan-global networks." And actually, these already exist. We can join online groups that share our religion, political views and interests.
In our very hectic, modern life we live in today, these alliances are often the only connections we have. Many American's no longer live in small towns where everyone knows everyone else and offers support and scrutiny alike. Now, we find the support and scrutiny in our online social networks with our contacts around the world. When (or will?) these alliances begin to become more important to us than our nation? If we stop seeing ourselves in our nation states, if we stop feeling representing by the nation state, won't we just throw them off and turn to these growing young global online networks that are connecting people across nation state boarders, time zones, geography, language and culture?
Kumar does not believe that the Google Earth incident will knock out the nation state's power, but it has uncovered the powerlessness of the nation state in many aspects of today's global media world. If nation states cannot keep up, people will begin to turn to other entities that can represent them and, most importantly, protect them. Will we be "Google citizens" in the future? .....I just "googled" this and was happy to find there does not appear to be a group calling themselves by this name.....Ray Williamson said that the UN was a better platform to deal with the security issues raised with use Google Earth than the individual nation state government. I believe this is true. The very sovereignty of nation states around the world was challenged by a United States company. It may be best that a supranational organization become involved to manage the affect of multinational corporations, that seem to have no allegiance to a single nation.
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Hi Sharena,
I thought that this was a very interested article as well and we seemed to touch on the same ideas in our posts! I think that these are all very intriguing questions of how we relate to the nation state. I think that despite our increased interconnectedness and networks throughout the world, we will never be entirely separated from the nation state. No matter how many nodes or linkages erupt, we will always be intrinsically linked to the boundaries the initially constrained us, but that does not mean, however, that we will not be drawn to wanting to belong to those nation states outside of our boundaries. The question of whether the nation state itself will always fight for us to represent its cultural sovereignty forever is another question that I think only the test of time will tell.