Virtual Country-Part 3 (Decentralized societies)

Globalization has put a burger on every man’s plate and communication has forever changed the way we perceive distance and time. Companionship will be a complex choice between men and machines with equal capability. Artificial intelligence will be put into every device making it indistinguishable from humans, with not just more, but deeper information. Human form factors will compete for space, jobs and bandwidth. The internet of things will be bigger and bloodier than the internet of people. Trolls will tinker with human emotions and humans with limited processing?will try to claw back as they?are cornered. What would it be, when we cede control to these devices and let the devices drive our lives .?Each new avatar of Siri, Watson and Cortana gets smarter ,drawing people more and more to their virtual worlds. Deep emotional conversation with chat bots will become a reality and companionship will break away from its physical moorings and move into the realm of uninhibited. Unshackled and unbridled this new forms of connectedness will spawn its own set of issues ,the dangers of which are being debated unabated. But the momentum of this change has already crossed the threshold and the whirlwind will take it to its conclusion. In crossing the line it would change everything in its wake, be it gods, godzillas or governments . How will we regroup and realign to this new reality, Pause! Virtuality. What will be the significance of ?nationalism and patriotism in this new world. Has globalization made us less patriotic? My answer to that is yes. How virtual will reality be or how real will the virtual seem. This is the grand Idea of a Virtual Country which I introduced my readers to in my previous posts. I will dissect the idea of a dis-intermediated society in this section.

Every revolution is born of a desire for change and we are standing at the shore front of that change right now. We have to change to remain relevant and our digital avatars give us a new lease.?We cannot change countries but can choose our communities in our digital lives.. Not long from now the collective conscience of these powerful digital communities will take colossal forms that will force?nations to recognize union status to these communities. This is the idea of a “Virtual Country”??that one day will be recognized as a trail blazing debate that changed the way we look at the world. Nations will be nothing but service providers who collect taxes to provide services. Physical land masses will be limited to serve physiological needs and the rest will subsume into the digital.?Citizens will choose nations, willing?to pay a higher tax depending on what the nation gives them in return for the taxes that they pay. The service providers have to compete for better services at the best prices or they turn into ghost nations that are commercially unviable. If digital communities can cause revolts and reforms , so will they emerge and evolve into digital sovereigns in the new world. Two parallel worlds will compete for their citizens… the real and the virtual.

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The world processes and permeates in digital. The real world that you touch and feel may still be analogue but we transmit, transform, and transpose in digital. The analogue world of the 70's reminds me of a noisy, sketchy, below par experience in comparison and yet there's nostalgia and innocence attached to analogue. The innocence stems from our inability to accomplish little in the analogue world and the nostalgia, from the incapability to capture the past for the posterity at will. Digital decreases nostalgia, with its power to recreate ,when you want it, with more color, pomp and flourish. How can you be nostalgic about something that you have just seen or can see again when you wish to. Not that analogue was not capable, but may be because it did not place the power to alter the truth in the hands of the user, as efficiently as digital. These forks of reality that digital and virtual create may not necessarily be fake identities, but rather the real identities that you always wished to project and failed. This fork of reality need not necessarily be a lie but merely another version of truth , perhaps more real than the truth that we touch and feel in the physical world. So than, what are the consequences of a digitized , Virtual ,decentralized and disintermediated society. What happens to the human constructs of religion, marriage, pleasure, relations, responsibilities, philanthropy, protection, law, crime punishment, belonging, brotherhood, ownership, hierarchies, children, elders, life ,livelihood, and values……… The existential reality.

Back in our physical world, the paradox is that, more than ever before, we witness a world asking for its space, recognize identities and preserve and protect the tribal identity. As the world shrunk to enable everyone to reach out and hold every other being across the continents, identities have only sharpened and mushroomed in sometimes violent ways of expression. Often these dichotomous streams of behaviour?erupt and take shape, giving credence to identity as a major diversion from real issues in leadership and politics that emerge from this paradox of modern times. These diversions aside, the biggest clash of identities will happen in the battle of virtual and reality. As virtual gains ground in its momentum, reality will accumulate grime and grudge to rear its head in retaliation. Reality and the virtual have, and ?will coexist, but technology will evermore push the boundaries of virtual to infringe the real and dominate the future discourse. It is no longer relevant to ask “how real is this”, for the myth is in the mind. Borrowing from a discourse on dualism “There is something between us and truth, the absolute Reality, and that is called the mind”. The cloning of consciousness , so to say with multiple replicas of?self in the metaverse will open up a new world where your own avatars will clash with each other. The nature and the nurture provided in these metaverses will decide who you want to be. These avatars will create multiple forks of your personality and consciousness. Theses virtual avatars, or false identities as the critics may call it, will still unveil a new truth.

Technology first eases and than erases the very ideas that it was meant to assist. From being an enabler it?becomes the harbinger of change. No phase of modern history has witnessed the changes unfolding in the last two decades. Starting with Arab spring that spread across the region wiping outdated and established political regimes across continents , we saw revolutions for change that started from twitter handles and gained momentum and created a ground swell powerful to uproot?dynasties and dictators. In the early days of the web, the world was searching for the killer apps that will drive the internet. There is no dearth of these apps now. Facebook and the googles have turned the world into communities. Virtual identities will outweigh nationalities and tribal identities. Tribal identities become trivial as technology and virtual realties convert large swathes of humanity to virtual communities where members swear by its allegiance that can outsmart and outpace the emotion of patriotism if you may. This change is the beginning of massive movement that will rock the very tenets on which nationhood was defined. Virtual communities as countries may seem an outlandish idea today ,but it is time to give it its due. More debate and deliberation will eventually shed light and legitimacy for it to germinate.?As Identities, ownership and relationships get more sublime and societies start breaking barriers of roots and religion a new order will emerge. This will demand?a new set of structures and statutes that will be required to keep it glued, without which they again turn into virtual ghettoes.

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Most part of organized human existence has been influenced and governed on templates of?religion and politics. But as the world connects and seemingly shrinks , it is interesting to see how?these templates built around physical identities , with membership norms wrapped around geographies , religion and politics, continue to serve this generation who are demanding more from every byte . In spite of its limitations and inability to address the aspirations and anxieties of today, these established templates?latched humanity to their idea of identity. But what will the journey from here look like? Will connectedness become more important than rootedness. There was a political incentive to keep people bound to the religious decree and dogmas that were meant to resist and restrict. But as?people connect?with the ease,?allowed by technology today, society stares askance on why the?status quo should live on . The generation ahead will not just question, but will tear down the idea of nationhood and belonging basis these boundaries.?The future will stand the scrutiny of this new generation, unwilling to mythologize the old ways . People will unshackle from authority and control ,and as that happens, nationalism will loose its meaning and a new world emerges that will shrink the realm of reality and realtors. Reality will subsume into the world of virtual. Nations will want to shed boundaries and think of themselves as mere service providers competing to provision services to the virtual citizens and virtual countries. The virtual will triumph because they will carry no past baggage building on rational rather than rancor and rhetoric .

……We have kicked the can of?politics and religion too far. Let us gamble with technology and reason this time. See you in my next post.