:: Permeable borders ::

While reading Benedict Anderson's book, Imagined Communities, I came across a passage on page 19 about the difference in people's impressions of nationalty and their nation's ability to be "ruled" based on how fixed/rigid or porous/flexible the borders of nation were. Anderson makes the point to show the difference between the dynastic system that is a monarchy and the supposedly merit-based system that is most modern-day governments.

His point leans more towards the difference between spiritual/divine oriented systems (i.e. monarchy) and rational-legal systems (i.e. democracy). However, his point about the permeability and fluidity of national boundaries in monastic systems got me to thinking about how this same issue in the online space might facilitate self-government rather than dynastic ownership, effectively flipping his argument on its ear for our purposes of studying online communities.

Here's my thoughts:

• The innate nature of the web allows for linking to other pages/sites on the web. If we equate the web to a world of its own, you could then equate each website to being its own webnation within that webworld.
• Because the innate nature of the web allows easy access and linking between these webnations, in effect, it makes the boundaries between nations porous, fluid. A webnation can always bring in ideas and symbols from other webnations by linking them in and then reuse those ideas and symbols for its own purposes.
• In effect, this creates a defacto grassroots style of community management that keeps the nation flexible, dynamic, interpretive, the antithesis of a "divine" controlled monarchy but also not really a rationalized place such as we see in Canada/US.

So..with this in mind, the questions I'm pondering have to do with the effects of this grassroots nature on any given community (what I was calling here a webnation)...

Does the permeability and fluidity of the community's boundaries in the online space account for the quicker speed in which members of an online community often find intimacy with one another, identity within the community and a feeling overall of connectedness and membership and belong?

P.S. An interesting overview of some of the ideas from the book are found in a culture course overwiew on the University of Chicago's website, not that I agree with all of their conclusions, mind you.... ;-)