Global Communications

“Global communications, especially the internet, have in effect abolished space, or at least our experience of space. Yet the nation state was predicated on space. It was a political-social-economic-cultural phenomenon that thought together a group of people, however heterogeneous, because they lived in the same region. They might be quite different, but they were neighbours. They occupied the same territory. They shared the same language. They lived under the same political system. They were part of the same economy. When my family came to Britain, they were opting to share its fate. They were sacrificing their past for the sake of what they saw as a better future. They were moving home. Today, thanks to globalisation and the ease and low real cost of travel, no one has to make that choice any more. What then becomes of identity? Britain is where we are, but in what sense is it who we are? Citizens of the world, we no longer have a sense of the local, which is where identity begins. The nation state is fragmenting before our eyes. What, in such a world, is the meaning of the word ‘home’?”

The Home We Build Together p. 8