Technological Expert- Yeo Jia Wen
With state sovereignty, the state can decide on what they want to do in the country, and how they want to be governed, without consulting the will of other countries. However, state sovereignty has become harder to achieve with globalization. Technology makes it harder for the state to oversee the whole country. One clear example would be the World Wide Web. It offers an opportunity to gain access to knowledge and services from around the world. In the arena of information, the media's messages are no longer confined within the boundaries one state. Information can now be broadcasted instantaneously across geographical borders. As such, it can be seen that technology has developed in a way that a country’s media can no longer be considered local. Websites like Youtube.com and Myspace.com provide a convenient doorway for simply anyone to receive and release information from and to the rest of the world. The information that people receive or release is beyond the control of the government. Clearly, instead of the government controlling the country, technology has enabled people to stand up to control the country. As a result, state sovereignty is compromised and the state would not be able to limit its people within its boundary.
With state sovereignty, the state can decide on what they want to do in the country, and how they want to be governed, without consulting the will of other countries. However, state sovereignty has become harder to achieve with globalization. Technology makes it harder for the state to oversee the whole country. One clear example would be the World Wide Web. It offers an opportunity to gain access to knowledge and services from around the world. In the arena of information, the media's messages are no longer confined within the boundaries one state. Information can now be broadcasted instantaneously across geographical borders. As such, it can be seen that technology has developed in a way that a country’s media can no longer be considered local. Websites like Youtube.com and Myspace.com provide a convenient doorway for simply anyone to receive and release information from and to the rest of the world. The information that people receive or release is beyond the control of the government. Clearly, instead of the government controlling the country, technology has enabled people to stand up to control the country. As a result, state sovereignty is compromised and the state would not be able to limit its people within its boundary.
This is especially so when the number of internet users have risen over the years. Research has shown that world internet usage is at 1,114,274,426 people, as of March 2007. This signifies that an increasing number of people is using the World Wide Web, which can greatly undermine state sovereignty as explained above.
There are attempts to impose state sovereignty on the internet, but it is difficult and might just prove to be ineffective. One clear example would be the website pantip.com. Pantip.com is one of the most popular websites in Thailand. It has a list of rules which members are expected to follow. These rules include the prohibition of messages critical of the King and his royal family, those that contain foul language and sexually explicit content and many others. These rules are actively enforced on the website. However, when an offending post is spotted in the website, it is note entirely removed from the World Wide Web, but put into a trash page, which is accessible to everyone. Most importantly, the state government would not be able to control the people from not accessing the page, if they want to read it. People would be able to do things that the state government may disapprove of in the World Wide Web, but this is beyond the control of the government. As such, it can be seen that state sovereignty is greatly compromised with developments of technology. The World Wide Web has inevitably become an uncontrollable source of flow of information that the government cannot prevent, as technology has caused the internet to become so massive, powerful and influential.
However, some may argue that developments of technology can help to further enforce the state’s power to control the country. Indeed, control of the state may prove to be more effective if the government harnesses technology the right way to their benefit. One way would be to use the media to influence the people’s way of thinking. Technology has become an indispensable part of many of our lives in the modern world today. By spreading ideas through the media, a large number of people will be exposed to certain information and this influence the way people think and act. The media can act as a powerful tool of the government in setting up certain mindsets among the people. This enables the government to control the country more effectively and thus better enforce the state’s power on its people.
With developments in technology, state sovereignty will definitely be comprised. It is impossible to impose complete control over the information that people access through the World Wide Web. Eventually, it is all a matter of how well the government is able to harness technology to spread its influence and use it its benefit, in order to improve state sovereignty in the modernized world today.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_8/hongladarom/index.html
http://www.okusi.net/garydean/works/Globalisation.html
http://www.globalisationguide.org/05.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/LAU202A.html
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27/041.html
1 comment:
Perhaps there are both pros and cons to the whole soverignty issue, and the issue about the freedom we now have on the Internet. Nowadays anything - literally anything - can be seen, heard, or read from the Internet. However, through this, is there a case of having too much freedom? Perhaps one negative thing about the Internet today would be that nothing is private anymore - a clear example would be how people's videos and pictures suddenly appear on the net without their consent (haha). Maybe now there's a case of having too much freedom. However, I don't think we could live without the Internet either, and curbing the negative side effects of the Internet is no easy task. It's kind of interesting how we talk about limiting the unpleasant effects of the Internet, but we ourselves are unwilling to give up our freedom on the World Wide Web.
-Shirleen Low(:
Post a Comment