"Google Earth" By Max Mostly
When does an organization of individuals become a sovereign nation?
Is it when they are recognized by other countries as such within specified borders?
And of course you would need citizens within those borders, correct?
Or is it when that organization has control over trade and finances, and public speech in other nations?
Would you say Google the Company meets most of these requirements? They may pay rent and taxes to operate within a specified region, but money is but a minor detail to Google, they could operate anywhere and in some ways they do. They have offices all over the planet, much like a our foreign embassies that we use to remind other countries of our power and presence.
The reason why i say this is not to label Google as it's own Nation, but to point out the undeniable characteristics it shares with a sovereign nation. What got me thinking about this was this article in wired news. Apparently, Google was attacked electronically from a location in china, and 2 human rights activists had their G-mail accounts hacked into. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to make the connection between the Chinese government and their notorious "love" of human rights. In fact Google can only operate there under strict censorship rules, but that's about to change.
"Google said that the attacks, combined with attempts by China over the last year to “further limit free speech on the web” led it to conclude that it needed to “review the feasibility of our business operations in China.”
The company decided it will no longer censor search results on Google.cn, which it had been doing as a concession to the Chinese government since 2006 in order to be able to operate in China."
This is obviously an organized retaliation directed against the Chinese government, and China's actions represent an act of spying, that would normally be justification for traditional war under different circumstances. Instead Google has decided to make it a war of information. When an organization's private info is attacked by another entity with competing interests, (in this case a government with a strict anti-free thought political stance), The organized entity must retaliate in order to display it's power.
Much like a free trade agreement, compromises were made in which software and information were given to the Chinese to use at their discretion, so that Google could spread and expand their business (or empire,... remember they are protecting people's livelihood as well, not many corporations can say that about non-employees). All they had to do was honor the public policy of the Chinese, and when that trust was broken through China's treasonous methods, Google was given the political capital to eliminate those compromises and allow free thought to an entire nation.
It is fascinating to know that we can create a state that exists mostly in a meta-physical environment, and it can achieve real world results, and repercussions as well. Adversity and acts that violate human rights can now be tried, and convicted, by jury of the world, and not just a select few who wish control it.
Google acts like a sovereign nation in which it has citizens livelihoods that it must protect, but at the same time exposing our worlds national and physical borders as nothing more than arbitrary barriers created to separate and control society, ideas, and culture.
Remember we are only a free online nation while we still have net neutrality. Google is all about keeping this idea alive, and not killed by those Corporations who wish to see it's death, so that they can take back the control they once had.
Just for some extra reading, here is some more proof that our government is blinded by money, and it's a good thing this time. .
Having any information available, -no matter how "immoral", you believe it to be, will always be more important that hiding it, because at the end of the day, that information still exists, and hiding it just creates an atmosphere of distrust and dishonesty about the world we inhabit.
