Is global citizenship about Google, Amazon and Facebook, or is it about aspiration to higher goals?

“Responsible leadership in government, business or civil society is founded on (responsible) global citizenship” – Malcolm McIntosh

Does the rise of the global citizen mean the demise, or at least the transformation, of the nation-state? Certainly, anyone who has spent any time in China in recent years will tell you that everyone is full of ideas and politics around a table and over a beer, but much more circumspect online: it’s all very Orwellian. And as social media expands into every corner of our lives and into every crack in our brains—in almost all countries—we must wonder if in gaining the world, and therefore giving birth to global citizenship, we are not giving ourselves away to whoever is collecting the ‘big data’ at the supermarket checkout and in the global etherspace.