Where do I begin to present a right perspective on this? Start with either the ARPANET days or with the global commercialization or with the social media bubble? May be begin now and go back in time to support this concept? Well, let me do that.
The premise for this concept is that the information I have created here travels the globe freely, but I cannot. By that I mean, it is read by anyone anywhere in the world without any restriction. This is good in one way and bad in some other way. However, seeing good in everyone is the first thing and the best thing to do. So I thank the media like this one to be available to me 24×7 to publish my thoughts and to be available to others 24×7 to read what I publish. I also know that I need to go through lots of other things to create awareness and attract the mass to read what I say. That’s beside the point I am trying to drive here.
Here, either the nationality of the publisher or the reader does not matter. It does not matter when the material was published or when it was read. On a broader perspective, lots of things don’t matter. However, if I have to publish the same in some other country in some other media, it will not be this easy. While it is possible to receive the feedback electronically, it will not possible to meet the person giving feedback face to face to discuss more.
To create the feeling of a face to face meet, I can set up Skype or some other chat software to communicate. It will be almost travelling to the place where the reader resides. While I can do this over the internet freely and exchange ideas freely, it is not possible to travel so freely to the place where the reader resides.
While we do not have boundaries to communicate, we have boundaries existing to restrict travel. We need to identify ourselves with a nation or geographical region and obtain travel documents to do what we can do over the internet. We can freely receive things from anywhere in the world and send things to anywhere in the world, but cannot do so physically.
We have come a long way from the earlier days of communication when the only way to communicate was to write letters and wait for the response reach days or weeks later. We have moved to almost making it happen within seconds.
Yet, we have not made any progress in how we view nations from that era to that nations in 21st century. We have not aligned nations to reflect the types of communications that take place in 21st century. Let us draw some parallels on things we import/export for a country,and us, human beings who want to enter/exit a country in the same fashion.
We have import/export restrictions on goods to help us screen the things coming in or going out. However, once they go out or come in, they stay for indefinite length of time wherever they are. However, this is not possible with human beings. They are restricted to stay for a period of time and can or cannot renew if they needed to stay longer. Why should there be this restriction? As long as the person has entered a country or left a country legally, why should the stay matter, as long as the person remains as a good citizen of the country he or she has entered. While we need a government approved travel document to enter or leave the country, it is not necessary to spend lots of time in all kinds of processing to determine the length of stay. This is what we don’t need for the 21st century.
All those people who are now engaged in such activities can be released to other activities that involve ‘nation building’. While the ‘national protection’ is paramount, the processes that exist to determine the length of stay are wasteful. If the person who has entered the country legally and stayed in a specific country by not becoming a burden either financially or otherwise can be considered as a legal resident, but not a citizen. I think, this approach helps nations to build from scratch very quickly and any nation that needs resources can get them easily and economically from anywhere in the world so that task of building does not get hindered by the absence or a presence of a resource that is needed.
When there is no such thing as employer loyalty in the current era of hire and fire, it should not matter how the employee travel to which country or when as long as there is a job out there for them to do. While others can decry foul as the competition with locals ruins locals, why should we then have a concept of free enterprise when the enterprise cannot hire or fire freely?
My ramblings here are presented as food for thought and to generate some livelier discussions on this concept to arrive at a meaningful concept for a global citizenship, without wasting lot of resources to make it possible.