Tuesday, February 20, 2018

World Wide Web and Cosmopolitics

These days, many people spend significant amounts of time on the World Wide Web, aka the Internet.  The experience can be characterized as 'globalizing'--one is in immediate contact with others around the planet, and one is regularly reminded that one's location, time zone, and language, are specifications of a range of possibilities.  Accordingly, one is aware of oneself as part of a whole.  Now, many on-line experiences are irreal in some respect--fantasy sports, avatars, virtual friendships, etc.  But, most financial transactions are not.  So, for significant portions of the day, many people experience a reality that is as antithetical to particularistic off-line reality as Cosmopolitics is to traditional Nationalistic or Civic Political Philosophy, the reconciliation of which is among the most immediate of current social problems.

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