OK. So, this is an idea I want to develop a little further. I’d like to do a paper on it…but I really don’t have much background in poli sci, so if there’s actually stuff out there about it, then I’d be glad to know, and if anybody else wants to take this idea and work with it, feel free, because honestly, although I think about it quite a bit, I’m not sure how much writing about it I’ll actually do. This blog entry might be all you get. (Of course, it might not. We’ll see.)
I guess you could say this particular post is “divinely inspired.” See, I was doing some research for the novel I’m working on, and I searched for the name Melchizedek, referring to the king of Salem mentioned in Genesis 14:18. Of course, the Wikipedia entry was at the top of the Google search results, but–if you clicked on that last link, you’ll know this–right below the Wikipedia entry was the official website of the Government of the Dominion of Melchizedek.
It sounded vaguely sf-esque, and thus unrelated to my research, but the blurb about it caught my eye, and so I followed the link anyway. What I found surprised me–if any of it’s true, that is. A new nation just up and declares itself sovereign, manages to get its hands on some islands in the middle of nowhere, decides to claim parts of Antarctica (and its population?) as its own, and somehow gets other countries to recognize it? Now, I haven’t fully researched this, so I realize it could be complete bunk–but the Dominion of Melchizedek isn’t my main point here. What I’d like to point out is that bit on their welcome page that states: “Due to the fact that information about Melchizedek was almost exclusively and early found on the Internet, the Dominion was declared by NBC News to be the first nation on the Internet.”¹
This particularly interested me because I had already been thinking for a while about a story in which an online community, something like Second Life, banded together to declare themselves an independent nation. Considering the fact that the people of the Dominion of Melchizedek don’t actually inhabit Antarctica and various Pacific islands–although they claim that development and population is forthcoming–then right now, they are an Internet-based nation. So, what if all those Second Lifers decided to follow suit?
According to Article 1 of the Convention on Rights and Duties of States, “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”² Online communities have as permanent a population as any other community–that is, people come and go, but someone is always there. Online communities have no defined physical territory, but the map of the online world is definite, as is the location of the data that make up the world and its users’ avatars. Conceivably, an online community could establish a government and appoint ambassadors. In addition, Second Life issues its own form of money, which has a real-world exchange rate–something that only governments do.
Such cyber-nations have been postulated before. In fact, the Metaverse, as postulated by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, is one of the primary inspirations for Second Life: as Philip Rosedale, Second Life’s creator, once stated in an interview, “I concluded the Metaverse was going to happen….”³ The Metaverse, however, was not really seen as an independent nation in and of itself. I’m saying it could be, though. The potential is there–at least as far as the four qualifications of statehood are concerned.
What would happen if someone tried, though? That’s the question. Today’s real-world nations already want to control everything that happens on the Internet. I think, if a large group of people got together with the serious intent of creating an online nation, there could be some serious conflict.
And therein lies a story. I might write it. I might not. I hope somebody does.
¹Official Site of the Government of the Dominion of Melchizedek. Accessed 23 December 2007.
²Convention on Rights and Duties of States (inter-American), 26 December 1933, Montevideo, Uruguay.
³Maney, Kevin. “The king of alter egos is surprisingly humble guy.” USA Today (online), 4 February 2007. Accessed 23 December 2007.
