Who cares about borders, fences, walls, border patrols, barb wire and all that stuff. We live in a cyber world. Her Excellency the Queen of Namibia was trying to justify the inexistence of the Catalan nation based on the fact that she did not find solid lines in the map around the Catalan territory. What an old-fashioned mentality! I can scientifically prove that Catalonia is a nation using "inference" as a reasoning tool.
In a world dominated by routers, search engines, email, websites and bloggers, the concept of nation can be proven if those companies dominating the cyberspace devote the necessary attention to Catalonia, Catalan people and the Catalan language. Let's start with Google (I assume some of you will find this the most powerful argument, because of its co-founder Sergey Brin). All Google applications are available in Catalan, the search engine googlecat and gmail. Microsoft has a very effective spell check in Catalan that allows me to write in Catalan virtually spelling mistake free, even though it was forbidden to teach Catalan at school when I was a kid. Finally the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) approved in September the .cat domain to be used by everyone related to the Catalan language and Catalan culture. Even though I do not agree with Chomsky's definition of language, I think it is 100% applicable to nations: "a nation is a group of people that think they are a nation, especially if they have a web domain". Therefore it is scientifically proven that we are a nation, at least a virtual nation, and that's all that matters.
As you can imagine, some Spanish nationalists are outraged by the concession of the internet domain to the Catalan people, what they qualify it as secession, a virtual secession, even though the .cat domain is not ISO compliant (.ct would be the ISO-correct domain for a Catalan nation). However they kept the mouth shut when Gibraltar got its domain (.gi) what, in my opinion, goes against the Utrech treaty. Other remarkable domains are .hk (Hong Kong), .tw (Taiwan) and especially .tk (Tokelau), all of them with a two letter national denomination. Food for thought.
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3 comments:
I can understand some people have trouble with the difference between an independent country and a nation. Most people don't regard Scotland or Wales as nations either, though they are. But I would think Americans, living in a union of states would be prone to accept the concept peacefuly.
you make a good point about nations ian. You can never discount the idea of nation, which in itself makes the nation exist. the whole estatut controversy has made me think about this, as well as conversations with catalans (who are not republican nationalists).
Pujol, as you probably well know, broke his silence and said the fact that the estatut was approved in catalunya by an overwhelming majority is cause enough for politicians to seriously consider some of its propositions. I really admire pujol, by the way.
Americans I think are united by an idea of being American. We also have one common language. But even so, you look at countries like Switzerland where there are 4 official languages. it works within the context of a federation in which each canton (???) rotates in leadership for one year mandates. there is mutual respect
as much as i disagree with nationalists, i think there is definitely room for discussion when the idea is powerful enough.
i'm cool with .cat (because of course everyone needs my approval)
anyway- as long as CAT doesn't stand for
C-hronically -An-Tipaticos, catalonia can even chip itself away from the mainland to form an island-- as long as its a freindly and peacefull island!
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