Virtual Nations

I read an article in the 2002 July issue of Futurist magazine about a concept called a "virtual nation". This is a group of people throughout the world connected together by the Internet, occasional meetings, and maybe some pieces of land here and there to which the people belonging to the v-nation pledge their allegiance to. The impression I got from the article is that such a nation is spread more or less evenly throughout the population instead of being concentrated in a geographic area, like traditional nations such as India, the United States, and Russia are. One example I can think of is the Jewish or Israeli Diaspora, which has been a v-nation for a long time, until 1948, when it become the traditional nation of Israel.

This is an interesting idea. I can think of such groups in our country. For example, Charlottesville, Virginia is a traditional governmental group; specifically, a city. Its people are clustered within a certain area in Virginia. Toastmasters International could be said to be a v-group or v-nation then, as its members are dispersed among the population. It has a government (international directors, International President, and so forth) and traditions (the Toastmaster program, the CTM and other awards, for example). We can speak of how dense these "nations" are. It has the same population roughly as Charlottesville, but it is spread out much more evenly. My religion, the Unitarian Universalists, would be such a v-nation also; it has its set of 7 principles, for instance. For example, Boy Scouts has ten times as many members as Toastmasters, so it is ten times as dense. Further, the lines of demarcation between v-nations and traditional nations are not distinct; Americans are spread throughout the world, and Toastmasters are concentrated in southern California.

However, to treat these v-nations as nations in the traditional sense would be incorrect. The article calls al-Qaeda such a v-nation, but it does not have a geographic base where most of its members live. Further, calling al-Qaeda a v-nation may be one way of thinking of this anti-terrorist effort as a war, or rather, a v-war, since war is defined to be armed conflict between nations. I do not think it should be called a war, because that encourages others, such as Israel and India, to wage wars of terrorism on their own, heightening the level of tension in that part of the world. It's a worldwide police action instead.

Although to think of groups such as Toastmasters and Unitarian Universalists as a virtual, spread-out group is an interesting concept, they are not nations in the usual sense and should not be treated as such.

Mathematics in life

My profession is mathematics, so I see mathematical things in life. I noticed two problems today. One concerns presenting a speech involving overhead slides to an audience. You want to put the projector so the image is not blocked either by you the speaker or by the projector. This gets into some geometry; in particular, lines from a collection of points (attendees) to the projector and the presenter. Is there an optimal way to do it, a formula dependent on the geometry of the room you are giving the speech in?

The other concerns a church that wants to go from one service each week to two. How will the parking situation change? Will there be a big crowd between the two services, and what is the average distance from where you park your car to the church?