With the invention of cyber communication, came high hopes of a connected, forward thinking web that is free from nationalism. As Nicholas Negroponte once famously hoped, “ [Thanks to the Internet] there will be no more room for nationalism than there is for smallpox.” These high hopes made the cyber world seem far away and different from the one we live in, almost fantasy like. The fact is that the people who live in the real world are the people in the cyber world as well. Opinions do not change in front of a monitor and perhaps ideas are amplified due to the anonymity that the web provides.
In an article, Evgeny Morozov provides examples of rampant nationalism on the Internet today. Wikipedia often finds itself the host of wars, “Greeks, Brits,and Americans tussled over [Jennifer] Aniston; Serbs, Austrians, and Croatians battled for Tesla the inventor; and Koreans and Chinese fought over soy milk.” While these arguments are very trivial, they do make a wall in communication. Larger arguments have also taken place, such as the geographic dispute over the Sea of Japan and Macedonia. International arguments like these led Wikipedia to add special policies to their site. In famous Internet wars there is also the blogging arguments between Pakistanis and Indians over Kashmir or the Korean accusations over Japan’s history of imperialism. These arguments became very heated and very real, much unlike Negroponts's vision of a communication system that made nationalist tempers ease.
Like the real world, the Internet is not all bad. There is a lot of positive communication between different nations occurring as well. The fact is, when we sit down at our computers, we do not change. People will say what they really mean on the Internet and sometimes this means being a Nationalist. Simply stated, the message will not change until the people do.
Source: http://web.ebscohost.com.dml.regis.edu/ehost/pdf?vid=4&hid=108&sid=5e1f990b-c263-49b0-a6dc-0e8dd368867d%40sessionmgr108#db=aph&AN=36617574
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