Resource and project management in the West could lead to the creation of new entities, such as city states (perhaps bearing nominal allegiance to the country they are sited in), free floating structures in the oceans or space which are beyond even the notional control of the parent nations, or the creation and membership supernational organizations like the various guilds and orders of the middle ages.
I am coming to the view that the "City" is actually the natural order of things. The "Country" is a fiction.
The City is defined by a hard, geographic reality. Every bit as real as a river, mountain, lake, ocean or glacier. It creates it's own climate and imposes strictures on movement of all that approach it. People must bend to the City as much as they create the City. On the other hand we can argue that we can melt glaciers, level mountains and divert rivers. The City is "facts on the ground" as they Palestinian - Israeli issue demonstrates.
The Country is defined by the amorphous concept of a border. Subject to whim and constantly redefined according to interpretation.
Within the City the people are constantly forced into communication with each other and thus speak the same language. They inter-marry and thus share the same blood. They are a Nation.
A Country is an agglomeration of Cities. It may also have independent pastoralists, tribes and nomads within its borders. As does Iraq. These individual entities all have their own individual characters and define themselves inwards by blood and language. It is a collection of many Nations.
The challenge for anyone trying to create a Nation-State, or even an Empire, (same thing with better spin) is to convince all of the several Nations within the area of influence that they claim that they are all related and can share a common destiny.
The convincing can come at the point of a sword, at the threat of divine intervention or as response to a perceived natural external threat. Attempts are made to find commonality and iron out differences. Often this has meant imposing a belief system and a common language. These strategies have been variously successful but never complete.
Those of you who have served in Afghanistan or Yugoslavia will probably have noticed something that I learned when I was five years old going up to Scotland to visit my Grandparents. I was constantly amazed and amused by the way that they could pick out fellow Scots based on their accents. Not just class based but geography - Lowlander from Highlander and Islander, North East from Southwest, Ayrshire from the neighbouring county of Lanarkshire, Ayr from Irvine, Annbank from Peebles. Based on these speech clues then they would attribute religion, education, attitudes, culture, even friend or foe (historically).
Over the millenia the people have held many beliefs, have given allegiance to many overlords, but at the end they still define themselves by geography and blood. By their City, or town, or village. For nomads I think we might talk about mobile villages - blood with no fixed geographic centre but certainly a sense of geography pertaining to pastures.
So when you say that the City - State is on the rise I don't think the City - State ever went away. Nation-States could be seen as just a kinder, gentler attempt by City-States to hold dominion, to establish an Empire, over their surrounding terrain and to secure the resource base they need to survive.
Kind of goes back to the Enlightened Self-Interested view of the world. Better to give a little and keep the natives happy than have to incur the costs of keeping them suppressed in perpetuity.
From that, Canada started as a colony with no City-States in evidence. Cities grew up within the colony. Now the Cities are acting as cities always have - they are a draw on people and resources and thus are a threat to smaller communities and hinterlands.
At this point in the past, once the hinterlands started to feel threatened they did things like hauling down flags and declaring themselves independent of the centre. The center responded either benevolently or malevolently with the tools available to reassert control.
The army was one of those tools. The church another. The school yet another. Sometimes the three together.
But at bottom the over-riding need was to have people bonded by a belief that was stronger than their blood-bond.
As noted this sometimes was effective and long-lasting, but never permanent.
The internet plays into this dynamic, as you suggest. But maybe not so much in creating new societies and beliefs as validating that those with different beliefs are not alone and therefore not "lunatic fringe elements" that a dominant belief system can steam-roller.
That makes the business of Empire or Nation-State building that much harder and perhaps it does make it impossible. In that case the end result would be the demise of borders and the return to discrete communities.
But unlike communities of the past these would not be isolated. They would be in communication with each other, both physically and electronically, and as everyone from Adam Smith to Marshall McLuhan and Alvin Toffler have pointed out - communication levels differences. You might tend towards the "global village" where people are geographically isolated sufficiently to be able to honour their culture and traditions without being perceived as threats or perceiving threats. At the same time they are sufficiently of a common mind that they are less subject to being stampeded to a course of action by demagoguery. That sounds totally pollyannaish. :-\
In the meantime, before the "Second Coming" we will have to deal with the chaos that will result as borders are reorganized and erased and people struggle their way through existing belief base conflicts convinced in the rightness of their own position. And that isn't going to be tidy.
