Fake Borders

DSBPI has written before, at least we think so (if not it is part of our regular lecture series), about how those in large cities have more culturally in common with each other than their own "countrymen" that live in rural areas. That a Londoner and a New Yorker are more alike than a New Yorker and say an Iowan -- the urbanites shop at the same stores, watch the same movies and face similar lifestyle choices. And that the increased ability to connect these globally disparate communities threatens (not in a bad way) a part of what is nationhood.

We layer on top of that the "nationhood" of multi-national corporations; that is the nation of IBM, Cisco, or McKinsey, where global teams join with common corporate culture.

And today we revise this model: breaking down barriers between corporations, so that the engineer at Microsoft working on Internet search algorithms can be part of the same nation as his Google counterpart. Of course, this is a major challenge because of the competitive nature of modern corporations. However, in no small part due to the growth of blogs, individuals are piercing corporate borders and firewalls, and starting conversations with "the enemy."

How will these growing communities of connections affect democratic institutions?