Federalism in a Digital World

Extract

We live in a world of explosive change in information and communication technologies (ICTs). Companies advertise cell phone rates that apply to calls anywhere within North America, trumpeting that North America is now a single “neighbourhood.” E-mail puts us in touch with friends and colleagues around the world as easily as it does with neighbours or colleagues in the same department. We phone individuals rather than, as in the past, a place, hoping that the person we are calling is “home.” Home is where the cell is, and not the heart. Newsgroups create virtual communities unbounded by territory. In general, ICTs appear to reduce dramatically the importance of geography, territory and distance. Thus if “living in a place” is what really mattered for identity in the recent past of Guterson's nove1, the scope and pace of this technological change should have a profound effect on identities. Simply put, ICTs have the potential to erode, and erode rapidly, the territorial foundations of our lives.