There are many ways to look at countries. Some see connected pieces of political geography; others see ‘imagined communities’ tied together by mythical values, histories and economic pressures.
The rapid globalization of the past few decades, in part driven by and in part reflected in deep technological changes, now forces us to look at countries as “Portals” merely regulating the flow of ideas, skills, and opportunities based on fast evolving protocols.
It is fitting then that one of the most apt metaphors for counter-illustrating this trend is the growing phenomenon of cloud-hosting companies offering subscribers a choice as to where their data can be hosted. After all, if you think of it, the ‘cloud’ was supposed to be the pinnacle of the internet, and the internet the very essence of ‘stateless borderlessness’, and yet here we are contending with the rise of data nationalism.
