Peter Diamandis: Technology Is Dissolving National Borders 129
An anonymous reader writes: Peter Diamandis, creator of the X-PRIZE Foundation, has a thoughtful piece on how technology is wearing away at the barriers between nationalities. He asks, "[W]hat really defines your nationality these days? Is it where you were live? Where you work? The language you speak? The currency you use?" Diamandis then proceeds to point out the following facts: Working remotely is now widespread, and will only become moreso once telepresence robots become ubiquitous. Translation services, both for written and spoken language are approaching sci-fi-level capabilities. The rise of cryptocurrencies is providing a method for people worldwide to move away from national currencies. He argues that in the coming decades, these technologies will mature and begin to make the concept of nationality much less important than it is today. Do you agree?
clearly (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the food you eat, the beer you drink, and which football/rugby/cricket team you support.
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which football/rugby/cricket team you support.
Supporting Millwall means you are as british as the Queen but supporting West Ham means you're filthy foreign scum who we should beat up next time we have a riot (usually every Thursday during the season).
What if I don't support a team?
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If you don't like sport and don't drink beer you're a raving fairy, that's what.
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If you don't like sport and don't drink beer you're a raving fairy, that's what.
I like playing sport, but find watching it dull. And I'm quite a fan of real ale. Does that make me a raving fairy?
I also like "my litle pony". How about now?
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If you don't like sport and don't drink beer you're a raving fairy, that's what.
Awright, 'arry? See that ludicrous display last night?
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I live in the USA, my national language is currently morphing into Spanish, and my currency is soon to be approaching the value of the peso.
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On the other hand, as I understand it, it's relatively common for NFL teams to move to a new town/city and they usually ta
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It's the food you eat, the beer you drink, and which football/rugby/cricket team you support.
Awright, 'arry? See that ludicrous display last night?
Fing about Arsenal is, they always try an' walk it in.
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Sorry, if you have lots of shiny things, then the localities police and army protect both your fleshy bits and your shiny things.
If you don't, then they don't really bother protecting either. They will write up a report afterwards, though, detailing how it was your fault it happened.
Re: Don't give the rich anything. (Score:1)
Police don't protect anything. They are called after a crime, not before (unless there's a protest against the state that pays their wage). They are called in hopes they can arrest a criminal and enforce the law which usually relates to property. If your squishy little body was damaged you may be awarded financial compensation. But if the crime was serious enough the police can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again, so your insurance better be paid up and the coverage adequate.
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i have more in common with some random dudes on the internet, than with some of my neighbours .
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i have more in common with some random dudes on the internet, than with some of my neighbours .
I've found that to be the case most of my life. Well, at least after the internet came along. But then I live in the US. It tends to work that way here. We're a nation of immigrants, except for the extremely small fraction of a percentage of the indigenous population that our ancestors and/or predecessors didn't kill.
I am amazed at how different this is in most other countries though. If you go to the EU there are all these little countries that do a great job of maintaining their national identity.
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It's perhaps 1/2 search bubble effect -- online, I tend to read about stuff I enjoy, and feel fellowship with the authors.
In meatspace, part of living in a city, is tuning out and ignoring, 99.95 percent of everyone I see. It's easy to feel that the entire universe is just myself and this laptop.
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Almost. It's about the laws that control where you may abide.
The author of the piece is a rich American. An Afghan living rough in Calais, waiting for a chance to sneek across the channel into the UK would never have written such drivel.
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would never have written such drivel.
It's not SUCH drivel. It's drivel of another kind.
He "figured out" that if you can afford to live anywhere in the world - you kinda stop caring about things like borders and flags.
I.e. He figured out that it is good to be rich. Whether through personal wealth or by being born in a wealthy society which can afford to be technologically advanced.
Trouble with his "realization" lies around the fact that people have a tendency and even need towards living in and being a part of a group of some kind.
So even s
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When the Singularity happens we will have such convincing VR gear at such low prices that an Afghan peasant will easily be able to afford it. So, when Talibans come around to his village to collect taxes and rape the women, they can all just put on VR gear and instantly be in London, or New York, or wherever they want.
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wooosh.
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When the Singularity happens we will have such convincing VR gear at such low prices that an Afghan peasant will easily be able to afford it.
Not if the Taliban/Daesh/whatever customs department stops the cheap VR gear at the border.
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The author of the piece is a rich American.
That about sums it up.
Who's the prez? (Score:2)
So, we are in Nerdonia here?
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My suspicion is it would be a virtual community.
Like a large minecraft.
How do you bomb that ?
Especially if we create a distributed version of that with no dependence on a single or small number of computers.
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If there really was a nation named Nerdonia we would bomb it to smithereens, invade it, exterminate all the inhabitants and incinerate anything left.
I don't think skin and hair grease are a substitute for crude oil.
Positives and Negatives to That (Score:2)
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There used to be a boat which did abortions in countries where the law wasn't favorable to abortion:
http://www.womenonwaves.org/en... [womenonwaves.org]
The laws of the sea were the only ones that applied.
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According the US, you can be killed by dronestrike nearly anywhere in the world for what you say....
Or who you know, or probably what kind of digital watch you're wearing.
Nationalism is no longer a positive attribute (Score:2, Insightful)
Right now we are born in one spot of this spaceship and are forced to stay there unless we pledge allegiance to another spot. We need to start recognising we are all on a captainless ship that has no idea of its resources and supplies or cares about the integrity of the ship. I'm not calling for a single "world president", rather cosmopolitanism requires a new system of government and one in which I predict AI will handle a large amount of governing.
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No thanks. The last thing we need is yet another layer of government on top of what our countries already have. The UN is bad enough, the USSR was worse. Being ruled over by machine is just more efficient slavery by the people who programmed it.
For wealthy gadabouts perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)
"Working remotely is now widespread, and will only become moreso once telepresence robots become ubiquitous."
Telecommuting (much discussed on slashdot over the past decade) is fairly common, but still hardly 'widepread' - only 2.6% of the U.S. employee workforce 'considers the home their primary workplace', and the single largest group of telecommuters are federal employees (3.3%), ahead of private for-profit sector workers (2.6%) (http://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting-statistics). And even among those (like myself) who would say my home is my primary workplace (I live about 3 hours drive from my employer) still need to go in to the office once a month or so. Which might work in some parts of Europe, but for most fo the world is unreasonably complicated and expensive. And I suspect the vast vast majority of those of us who telecommute or work remotely are still doing so within national boundaries.
"Translation services, both for written and spoken language are approaching sci-fi-level capabilities."
Bullshit. Well, so far anyway. The linked slashdot story contained a bunch of comments from people saying the skype translation was just about good enough for scheduling another meeting time, but you couldn't use it to do actual work.
"The rise of cryptocurrencies is providing a method for people worldwide to move away from national currencies."
Right up until you need to buy groceries or pay rent.
Of course, all these things will change. Machine translation will definitely get better. Telepresence might get beyond novelty and/or uncanny valley and genuinely make 'going for a beer with the boss' on another continent work. And my landlord might even start accepting bitcoin. But with the possible exception of machine translation, the rest of it will remain the province of fairly well off people for a long time. Well off people like Peter Diamandis.
Re:For wealthy gadabouts perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we're far more technologically capable than we're socially willing to use telecommuting. We don't use it much for that, but we have geographically distinct locations working together and it's really not a problem to get the work done. I did use to work for a consulting company and despite there being hundreds of employees, many thousands if you include our owners it felt like a 1-3 person shop with nameless corporate functions because those were the only colleagues I was seeing on a regular basis. Particularly when I was out all by myself there was a pretty big barrier to calling somebody up just to chit-chat, particularly since we'd both be billing our clients for it. I like having an office and colleagues I could talk to, actually once I worked in a start-up incubator where we weren't bigger than that we all talked together and it didn't really need to be the same company. And I'm somewhat of an introvert, I can't imagine how socially starved an extrovert would be. Of course you might say you should cover your social needs outside work, but it's a pretty solid chunk of your day.
Translation services are still crap, but I think we're moving towards more and more people learning a "world language" as a second language if it's not their first. It doesn't have to be English but I think most countries with <10 million people have some bigger language to work with. In Western Europe it's English, Eastern Europe many know somewhat Russian, Middle East it's Arabic, South East Asia probably Chinese, Latin America Spanish or Portugese, Africa mostly English and French. At least in richer countries not being able to communicate with 99%+ of the world isn't acceptable anymore. And that's only going to be become a bigger and bigger network effect to fewer and fewer languages. Other languages are also fairly big but have zero traction to become a world language like German, Italian, Japanese or Bengali, there's only a few real candidates that see significant use by non-natives.
As for currencies, that's probably the stupidest of all. My VISA card already is almost like magic when it comes to paying in any currency for a relatively trivial fee in context. If I was staying anywhere for a long time I'd open a bank account and exchange at an even better rate. A major function of currency is to allow economies to fluctuate, like the Greek debt crisis happened because the rest of the EU with Germany in particular didn't want to let them devalue the whole euro zone. An economy run on a crypto currency would be the same thing, except it would be a technological barrier instead of a political barrier. Nobody needs to hold cash for a long period of time unless they want to, if you want you can buy gold or whatever else you think has "real" value for it and sell it again when you want money.
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Telecommuting: I work for a company that is fairly traditional. I have co-workers in Germany, Japan, the other side of the USA, 3 co-workers working out of their homes in different cities. I work with them on a daily basis. The only reason I work in an office is because we work on physical hardware and need to share some resources. The irony is that talking with co-workers over phone, email, or shared screen is often more efficient than with the person in the same office.
Translation: translate.google.c
Re: For wealthy gadabouts perhaps (Score:3)
Segregation is good people.... (Score:1)
Why can't we segregate? I prefer not to know the habits of random female mutilation techniques that are common in the middle east. Oppressive China can keep their ideas of control to themselves. What goes on behind closed doors is something that cannot offend or disrupt me.
All I see happening is that the internet is tearing down the concept of living your own way privately. I'm starting to realize that privacy is the method of freedom. Not the freedom itself.
Let me explain. Some people rock climb for fun, s
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So just stay segregated. Doesn't have to be race it can just mean that you want to live only near people who share your points of view.
My, what a boring world you'd like me to live in, just so you can.
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So just stay segregated. Doesn't have to be race it can just mean that you want to live only near people who share your points of view.
My, what a boring world you'd like me to live in, just so you can.
You know, if your kind weren't "do-gooder" meddlers who flee some hell hole their policies have wrought and now attempt to recapitulate these same mistakes in our nice places to live, perhaps we might be more welcoming.
To restate: go ahead and visit us (we're actually friendly), but if you feel the urge to change our culture and laws please fuck right off back to where you belong—someplace else, you cultural carpetbagger. We promise we'll return the favor.
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To restate: go ahead and visit us (we're actually friendly),
If you're friendly, a) why are you a coward, and b) why are your laws so shitty?
but if you feel the urge to change our culture and laws please fuck right off back to where you belong
If your culture is harmful to others, it needs to be changed, whether you like it or not. If you won't do it, we'll do it for you. You are invited and encouraged to get with the times on your own.
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Are you attempting to claim moral authority over a "coward" merely because you use a pseudonym?
Nope. The issue at hand was congeniality, not moral authority. Try reading.
Also, our laws aren't shitty.
Subjective.
You may not like them, but that's life.
You may not like me acting to change them, but that's life.
Repeat after me: I should be tolerant of other cultures.
Yes, you should. If your laws are intolerant of other cultures, they should be attacked.
Again, "harmful to others" is a matter of perspective.
No. It isn't. Whether you care is a matter of perspective.
You have no moral high ground here...
I don't even know where here is, I was just making general statements. And apparently, others agree with me more than they do you.
What I propose is detente;
What you propose is maintenance of a status quo which was artificially created. That is not
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Why am I not surprised?
Maybe you knew I'd stop reading that paragraph when it appeared you were just jerking off.
Your culture & laws appear shitty to other cultures.
They're not my laws. They don't care what I think.
As I said, see your culture in the Supreme Court... hope you like it when our culture is foisted on you.
Snicker snort. It's certainly going from the coasts inwards, which has been the trend since always.
In one area of the country it's considered child neglect to let a kid walk home from school a quarter mile (read: "harmful to others"). In another area of the country it's considered harmful to allow consenting adults to do what they want behind closed doors.
Oh, you mean the law. See, there are distinctions which are not written into the law: they don't label the laws which make victimless events into victimless crimes as such, but that's what they are. And when no one is being harmed, but an activity is being criminalized, th
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I invite you to come live in Sweden for 7 or 8 years and see how you like abiding by their cultural norms.
I'm pretty sure you'll love paying 50% of your income in taxes, having to register your address with government every time you move, not being allowed to own any guns, and being hauled off to gaol for spanking your kid.
And since I don't get any inside advantage from having a Swedish partner, you're not allowed to have one, either.
Get back to us in 2022 or so and let us know how that's been working out f
The cultural paradigm is shifting (Score:5, Insightful)
The combination of globalization and remote working is changing the definition of the corporate culture. I've lived in Japan since 1991 and have clients not only all over Japan, but in Europe and North America. This has given rise to a shift in my cultural outlook from the perspective as a service provider. I think our cultural alliances are now more defined by where and with whom we hang out online. Rather than being more identified with nationality, I think we're more defined by the groups and activities with which we engage. I'm Canadian, but I've lived abroad so long that I have adopted various idiosyncrasies from other languages/cultures.
I can't say I feel very Canadian anymore. I do, however, feel very much in allegiance with software localization and server administration.
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Sure you don't mean, "I have foreign nationality, but I've been a resident of Japan for so long that..."?
I surely mean that my English is peppered with American slang, Britishisms, Aussie snarks and all manner of other borrowed '-isms' from living and travelling abroad. To varying degrees, I speak English, Japanese, German and French. My sense of language is no longer defined by Canadian English. I spent some years as a technical rewriter at Fujitsu, which used American English as its baseline for grammar, spelling and punctuation. It damaged my native Canadian English sensibilities. When you combine that with
It doesn't matter if I agree (Score:1)
I just hope it happens. Discrimination based of location of birth is just as bad as gender, or any other kind of discrimination. We all have a natural right to migrate where we want. Unfortunately the alphas claim the right to mark and rule their territory, puts us in kind of a bind. Borders serve no purpose other than economic stratification, to ration resources
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There are ways around the alphas' imagined right to fence us in.
dissolve border around Diamandis's bank account? (Score:4, Funny)
No. (Score:3)
Wealthy people said pretty much the same thing in (pre-August) 1914. Didn't mean much.
Human Beings are Wired for Tribal Affiliation (Score:5, Insightful)
National borders have become more irrelevant as material distribution, finance, education, supply chains, etc. go " on the wire. That said, human beings evolved from small, tribal communities. Our human heritage has left us, for at least the time being - far beyond the near-long-term - with an embedded presence for tribal affiliation. National borders may dissolve, but other "borders" will take their place. "Difference" is a primary defining factor in identity. National identities are learned, yes - but they are learned because we have a proclivity for closely identifying with like -minded, like-language, and look-alike physical similarities. Even if the latter disappear, we will invent new realms of "difference" that will lead to conflict and negotiation. This is a part of the human dilemma: how to deal with and co-exist with "difference".
Until we evolve - assuming we are able - beyond beings who define ourselves via tribal likenesses, we will not be able to do away with the problems (and some rewards) of identifying with those who seem "like" we do. New categories will appear; some will be stronger in some ways; smarter in some ways, etc.
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Stores tell me my nationality (Score:5, Interesting)
In the digital world, stores enforce my nationality. I can order a music CD or a movie on DVD from Amazon.com, but if I want to buy digital music or stream a digital movie I can't. The more we move towards digital content the more borders there are, paradoxically.
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The company being paid in place D improves the ability of drug cartels to hide their money and launder it. As for the free-trade agreement next year I'm waiting for the general strikes, burning tires and the hauling trucks parked perpendicular to the highway tolls and exits.
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"This content is not available in your country".
So much for digital globalization...
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To the torrents!
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In the digital world, stores enforce my nationality. I can order a music CD or a movie on DVD from Amazon.com, but if I want to buy digital music or stream a digital movie I can't. The more we move towards digital content the more borders there are, paradoxically.
Do you not remember region coding of DVDs? This isn't new. In the VHS days region locking was accomplished by using different standards.
I doubt it (Score:1)
Virtual Fappening Insanity .. (Score:1)
While you and Elon Musk, James Cameron, and the rest will be free to jet about the planet, the rest of us will be stuck in real cubicles under virtual observation by our PHB. Besides, telepresence will never replace tactile sensation, ask anyone who attended the fappening
Boundaries for Information = Yes, Physical = No (Score:2)
Information and informational service boundaries are slowly softening and breaking down since the Internet has made access to information ubiquitous and due to that you're able to consume or create content and reach a multinational audience easily. Some goes for providing information services such as web commerce, development services, or systems administration across the Internet. You can do those types of jobs that don't require any physical access or presence in an Internet virtual environment.
Some pla
I could see it happening (Score:2)
A governing body for each continent controlling local policies like resource management and wildlife preservation, and whatnot, and a global governing body dictating global stuff like how much we must pay in copyright taxes and other such wildly important politics.
I'm not saying it's a good idea or not, but I can see it happening. We're already moving in that direction. Japan takes over Australia, Korea and the island nations, China absorbs India and all the other surrounding countries that don't particular
Re:I could see it happening (Score:4, Interesting)
A governing body for each continent controlling local policies
you need to look up the word "local" in a dictionary. The continent of Asia is home to 3 billion people, give or take a few, including places as diverse as tech-crazy geeky Tokio and Taliban Afghanistan. You want to govern them with one governing body? Good luck.
The EU has the right idea, even if lots of it is flawed: To keep and respect local identies, but build a unifying structure above it.
There is little that people fight harder then attempts to take away their identity
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I don't believe in any unification of anybody with anybody. Eventually people want to govern themselves and not be governed by anybody else, especially as over time governing bodies require more and more resources, they grow bigger (that's their function - growing at the expense of everything and everybody else), the taxes, money printing (inflation), rules and laws become unbearable and eventually you get revolts, wars, polarisation and that is a good thing, there is no good government, all governments ar
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I much rather see transnational companies and transnational people
I don't like transnational companies one bit. They are parasites. I respect local companies a lot, where the owner is a person and not an abstract conglomerate of shareholders, most of which are themselves corporations.
without business rules, without business related laws
I shiver at the thought of that tyranny. It would make Stalin Russia look like a really nice place to be.
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Well, you can shiver all you like, AFAIC that's where we are going and I welcome it completely. Transnational companies are systems that help us eventually to reduce government power over people by connecting us in more ways than ever possible previously. Their scale and efficiencies are much higher than of any national level or local companies. AFAIC thinking about it in terms of 'parasites' is the wrong approach, you think that transnational companies somehow take something from economies while I see it
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Transnational companies are systems that help us eventually to reduce government power over people by connecting us in more ways than ever possible previously.
It will also drive average salaries down near zero, because that's what efficient companies do - reduce costs.
You obviously don't understand the basic hostility of a corporation towards its environment. Like predators, it will gladly eat all of the prey and then starve.
by lowering costs to as few as possible (including cost of government, cost of taxes, cost of regulations, cost of inflation, cost of doing business).
You forgot a lot of costs in there. Cost of labour, most importantly, but also cost of not harming the enviornment, both natural and social.
To say that a local company is better because ... what, it has to care about that locality?
Exactly. A local company lives within the community, and it suffers if the community suffers. If educa
DNA Culture and Religion (Score:1)
like fusion... (Score:3)
...the total dissolation of all national borders is always 20, or 50 or whatever years in the future.
My GF is from Russia. We know first-hand how real borders are, with all the residence permits, visas and other paperwork we need to go through all the time. Things have become easier compared to 20 years ago or so, when my parents went to Russia for a holiday, and russians were barely able to visit Europe.
But it's not because of technology. It's because of politics. Within Europe, the creation of the Schengen zone (basically: Every EU citizen can travel to any EU country without paperwork) has done more to make national borders become invisible than any technology ever. I could go to the airport right now and book a random flight to any EU country and just go there, with zero preparation, zero paperwork and no border controls. Show me the technology that has accomplished something comparable.
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You know, about 150 years ago those borders did not exist much either.
What a pile of nonsense. There are caricatures from the middle ages about the insanity of borders. True, it wasn't nation states, it was kingdoms and duchies and baronies - but between some cities that we consider neighbours today you would pay tariffs three different times.
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You can enter or exit the United States without being fondled/questions? I get questioned every week when I come back from Tijuana to San Ysidro.
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You're an idiot. As a German, I can go anywhere in Germany. Big surprise. So can french do in France, or chinese in China.
But nowhere in the world can you travel between 26 different countries with no border controls, visas, travel papers or any other kinds of bureaucracy.
Speaking as a 4-time migrant (Score:1)
Nationality, as in "having a national identity" is overrated. Every country has things they can collectively be proud of and things that are decidedly backwards, but which you can't see are wrong unless you've experienced otherwise. Once you have, you will not fully identify with that nationality anymore. Only then you'll see that you get to pick and choose what matters to you - and that's not a national identity but your identity.
It's not that important (Score:3)
Nationality is really just a legal construct, anyway - it allows a body of people (known as a 'government') to determine what rights and responsibilities you have by virtue of being in a particular physical location.
I think that most people have a stronger affinity to a culture - especially the culture they grew up with - than they do to a nationality, since culture evokes a more emotional response. Of course, for many people, the two are the same - but if you're a naturalized immigrant, they are two very different things.
Nationality will become even less important to people if more countries start trying to attract people to live in them (for economic or social reasons), but I don't see happening for a long while yet.
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Just to be clear, the concept of nationalities isn't going anywhere any time soon, as long as there's a need for there to be law and order in society. What *may* change is a person's affinity to a particular nationality.
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The US is pretty much the exception to the rule as most countries are nation states. Particularly when it comes to immigration and when immigrants tend to lean a particular way politically the government is often accused of selling out the people - those culturally native to the region - for political gain through immigrant votes and that can send a lot of sparks flying. Sure the culture engages but the national identity, social norms, language, food culture, music, fashion, art forms, sports interests and
No it is not (Score:3)
There is so much wrong at that assumption, I wonder why this was posted at all. On second thought, this is slashdot.
Anyway, his premises are all wrong. For example, the tele presence thing. If we can built robots so we can do our work somewhere else then these robots can do simple labor by themselves without being a tele presence device. Tele presence would also require a lot of energy and a lot of resources. To be a truly replacement a large quantity of those devices are needed. In addition, there are already people everywhere on the globe. Why not let those people do the job who are there? With capitalism this will also not work, as a tele presence device + a human is always more expensive than a human alone. For caring jobs such devices would not work, as humans require humans. For brain jobs, we already have tele presence in form of Internet video conferences. Even if we would have machines for tele presence or goggles it is not the same as with humans. I know many technology freaks do not understand that fact and therefore they deny it. However, human interaction is very important.
Working remotely is not widespread. We in the tech industry and science do it. However, we still have personal meetings. And this is not going away, as see above.
The money things is also very strange. I live in the EU. We have this Euro currency. However, I still feel the same way about my origin (Swabian, German, European) as before they introduced the Euro. It is just money. An money is good for paying things, but it is not part of my identity. When they revoked the German Mark, many people thought the Germans would freak out, as it is the center piece of their reality. The truth is most do not bother today.
Your cultural context is based on what you eat and drink, what customs you have, what celebrations you have, and it is not a logical formula with a set of criteria. Nation is a feeling, just as to be a local patriot to your town, school, football/soccer club.
And I am absolutely sure that I will speak German and English (to some extend) also in future. Maybe I am able to learn Spanish or Portuguese or Chinese. However, that will not blur where I am from, where I think I belong to. Even so, nation is a construction form the age of the enlightenment.
A yes. And in recent years I have the distinct feeling that there is a lot of re-nationalization going on in Europe. Look at the Scottish, Catalans, North Italy, the UK itself and many more. The true boundary distructor is capitalism with its idea of globalization. It causes rasistic tendencies to rise in many countries coupled with hate against religions. Technology cannot fix that. If you want to fix that you must change the effects of globalization. He thinks technology is the solution to all problems, mistaking the tool they are for the solution. The solution to our problems are based on social processes including politics.
Marshall McLuhan (Score:1)
well... (Score:2)
It would have been thoughtfull (Score:2)
in 1995.
Now its just a bunch of 'No Shit'
[W]hat really defines your nationality these days? (Score:1)
Perhaps ... (Score:2)
Four things that define nationality to me (Score:2)
[W]hat really defines your nationality these days?
One is the products that you're allowed to buy in your region. There are several reasons why a product may be available to someone in another country but unavailable to you. One reason is embargoes; good luck finding substantial quantities of legit American imports in Cuba or Iran. Another is different safety regulations; Kinder Surprise is unavailable in the USA because food isn't allowed to enclose non-edible goods. A third is entertainment media because of decades-long exclusive territorial distribution
What is a nation (Score:2)
The nation is the sovereign People deciding on laws and having a state to enforce them on a territory (in some rare case like medieval Iceland it can work without the state).
Technology sometimes make the territory part irrelevant, but I am not sure this is a good reason to toss the People sovereignty part just because of that. If the People is not sovereign, then how will be instead?
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2. Jews live in the countries where (some of them) are pushing for open borders. If open borders turns a country into a third-world hell hole, why would a Jew want to turn his own country of residence into a third-world hell hole? It's not in his own self-interest.
3. Singapore: diverse, not a hell-hole. Ditto Canada.