On “Borderless”
A public, open-sourced proposal for a new Fabrica transdisciplinary studio
This essay is directly addressed to the management structure of Fabrica communications research center in Villorba, Italy. Its single purpose is to raise awareness for and put in motion the proposal for the creation of a new line of research and studio called “Borderless”. It will be the objective of the following words to summarize the focus of this research and the reasons why the effort is worth pursuing.
The projected extinction of nation-states and its complex array of design consequences
Let’s begin with an extrapolation. Imagine a world that wakes up free of any physical borders. No checkpoints. No Rio Grande, DMZ or Qalandiya checkpoint. Would the whole population of the Maghreb start walking or boating towards Helsinki? Would Gazans plunge into Tel Aviv? Would the world dive into complete chaos? Or would we slowly regroup around language familiarity, ethnicity, natural geography? By sparking the vision of a new, and unlikely scenario, there’s hope to quickly make clear the vast sum of policy and design problems that would arise from a completely new world.
Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country (United Nations, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”).
There’s no reason why we shouldn’t question the notion — and therefore the absence of the notion — of territorial sovereignty, the exclusive right of a state to exercise its powers within the boundaries of its territory. The works of Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, from whom much of this theory was derived and formalized, was a product of its time. Although territorial sovereignty feels common place to us, this was not the case in his sixteenth-century Europe:
(…) the notion that the king ruled his people was old and familiar, but the assertion that the king ruled a defined territory was new and innovative. A population that possessed some common characteristics such as race, religion, and language had traditionally been the defining source of popular sovereignty.Historically, the chief of a specific tribe derived his powers from the members of his tribe.Because tribal sovereignty was tied to the tribal people and not to the tribal territory, it was immaterial whether the tribe was nomadic or attached to a certain territory. (Ali Khan, “The Extinction of Nation-States”)
It’s clear that the arbitrary partition of the surface of the globe into neatly defined nations have become dysfunctional in the face of new global realities.
“It’s worth reflecting that nation states are a creation, an artefact. The nation has always been a design project, articulated through boundaries, maps, flags and insignia”. (Dan Hill, “Dark Matter and Trojan Horses”)
The negative effect that the limitations imposed by borders on the creation of creative solutions is not new. Elements of transnational stress are featured daily in the media: the burden of Italy and the EU when migrant boats capsize in Lampedusa, Yemeni and Pakistani popular anger against military drone strikes, wide-reaching ripple effects of finance de-regulation, Fukushima radiation leaking into the Pacific waters. It’s in this complex areas of global “wicked problems” that the new Fabrica studio would research, debate and design.
Questions and solutions
How will a passport look like in the future? Where does a global citizen pay taxes? Will national pension schemes still exist in the near future? Will border patrols and checkpoints become extinct, and if so, how will they be phased out and by which side of the fence? How will an international flight ticket look like? Will mobile roaming charges continue to exist and make our lives miserable? From the most complex to the very trivial, the new Borderless studio will open itself for input and debate about this exciting new world.
“Passports were originally created to provide safe conduct in time of war. During most of the eighteenth century it seldom occurred to Europeans to abandon their travels in a foreign country which their own was fighting.” (John U. Nef, “War and Human Progress”)
Why now, and why Fabrica?
We are at a historically low confidence level in national governments. Concurrently, there are today around 300 million expatriated people roaming the Earth who have a really hard time pinpointing where home is. This is a very large contingent that could benefit from this research.
At the same time, Fabrica, which in its very nature has been a home to diversity and multiplicity, would be at a privileged place to spearhead the discussion. Not only that, Fabrica is in a position to design and display the results of this research to an international audience. I personally see no other more fertile ground for this debate to take place.
“The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism”. (Murray N. Rothbard, “Anatomy of the State”)
“(…) a younger travel writer is in a better position to chart the first days of a new Empire, post-national, global, mobile and yet as diligent as the Raj in transporting its props and its values around the world.” (Pico Iyer)
References
“Anatomy of the State” (2011), Murray N. Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises Institute.
“Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary” (2012), Dan Hill, Strelka Press.
“Great Empires, Small Nations: The Uncertain Future of the Sovereign State” (2007), Joseph M. Colomer, Routledge.
“If Mayors Ruled the World” (2013), Benjamin Barber, Yale Press.
“The Extinction of Nation-States“ (1992), Ali Khan, Washburn University.
“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (1948), United Nations.
“War and Human Progress” (1968), John U. Nef, W. W. Norton & Company.
Videos
“Mapping the future of nations” (2009), Parag Khanna, TED.com
“Where is home?” (2013), Pico Iyer, TED.com
“Why Mayors should rule the world?” (2013), Benjamin Barber, TED.com
Related Terms
Nation-state, border, frontier, citizenship, nationalism, sovereignty, patriotism, security, terrorism, trading, ethnicity, map, flag, currency, governance, virtual nations, international law, Internet, anarchism, globalization, genocide, surveillance.
