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The Internet represents the heir apparent to the cultural and social wealth of the American 'Empire' and will ultimately serve as a crucible for new, transcultural, digital civilizations.
2. Preliminary Exploration
I've explored the concept of virtual civilizations in a number of posts:
- Digital Nations: The New Frontier takes a look at the historical inheritance of cultural/social wealth that in part led to the rise of the Roman, British, and American 'Empires.' It looks forward to the rise of the digital nation from the cultural and social infrastructure of America. This is essentially my first focused exploration of the concept of digital nations and represents my earliest thinking on the matter.
- Monuments of our Age: Foundations of Civilization in the Digital World addresses the concept of civilization from a historiological perspective, examining the requirements for civilization and providing a number of scholarly definitions for civilization in a modern context.
- We the People: Digital Civilizations is the post that I've used for most of my social proof, because it provides a brief overview of the topic and presents some foundational evidence as to the foundations of civilization already exigent within virtual worlds. This post received a good amount of feedback, and it's been one that I've circled back to at various points. This was also my first real call for colonization of the digital wilds: "Rather than anathematizing video games and virtual realms as base and 'savage,' we need settlers who will actively shape the digital frontier for good. Rather than complaining that digital worlds are mindless and violent, maybe we need to be the ones to find out how we can make them thoughtful and exalting."
