Virtual Communities: Bridging, Supplementing and Even Superseding Real Ones? (Part Two)

It is clear the internet is forcing change to even the most obstinate of industries. Companies like CASH music, Amazon and Netflix are finally starting to shed light on the cracks in the broken business models of the music, book and television industries, respectively. In fact, such internet institutions are quickly becoming more powerful than many physical institutions. For example, top Twitter celebrities have tens of millions of followers, while top youtube channels can attracts millions of subscribers and fandoms of hundreds of thousands of members.

Rather than single-issues campaigns or transactions, we are starting to see actual semi-permanent communities – the World of Warcraft community has two million members more than the population of Switzerland. Many such communities have their own currency, linguistic artifacts, celebrities, memes and commonalities. Certain communities spring up for philanthropic reasons, like Kiva and GOOD. Crowdsourcing is becoming common and perhaps a tenth of all marriages now began as online relationships. It is not uncommon for friendships, loyalty and even love to spring from online, rather than physical sources.

As the online world grows in importance, governance structures will need to evolve to support these communities. When the average person turns online to answer questions about their health, hobbies, religion, or relationship, why shouldn’t they be able to turn online for political action?

Web-based companies, like Google, already exert a great deal of control. Google, with up to a billion users, operating in 60 countries and in more than 130 languages, is one of the most international organizations in the world, arguably with much more international input than our current supposed international institutions such as the United Nations and World Bank; the former’s security council is effectively controlled by only 5 nations, while the latter has a virtual guarantee of an American head. If we accept that Google can stand up to countries like China, is it not reasonable to ask what makes Google’s governance more legitimate?

This internationalization is beginning to have real impacts. While we may protest at the Conservative government’s attempts to invade our internet privacy, Google’s new privacy policy may in fact impact us more (in terms of how it affects our day-to-day information stream) and is far more reaching in terms of number of people. Less than six million people voted for the Conservatives in the most recent Federal election – think of how many online movements can attain similar support. While one could argue that online support is simply easier, how much effort does it really take to walk down to a polling station and vote? In terms of relevance, people are increasingly able to work, educate, socialize and volunteer online. Sure activities like eating and sleeping still take place in the physical world, but are these really how we craft our identity?

As online players become increasingly relevant in our lives, will democratic structures evolve to meet this growing need? Perhaps there will one day be a Google parliament and its decisions on privacy, investment, censorship and the like will be more important than those made in bricks-and-mortar parliaments. No longer is our political activity constrained by our geographic location, and as the importance of online communities grows, so too should the availability and powers of online forums for collaboration and governance. Online communities will continue to grow and we must evolve to manage this growth. National laws and governance became relevant as small communities banded together to form nation-states, kingdoms and empires. International laws and organizations became important in the era of globalization. Therefore perhaps one day cyber laws and organizations will attain increasing legitimacy and breadth in the age of information. I would encourage everyone to think and discuss what online governmental bodies should look like and how each of us can participate in and shape them in their infancy.