The Folded Paper: Inventing Cyberdiplomacy

In 2017, retail e-commerce increased by nearly 25 percent while total retail sales-e-commerce and brick-and-mortar combined-grew just 6.3 percent. The trend and its message have been clear for years now. Those consumer retailers who want to survive, let alone prosper, are converting to digital sales as their customers give up the tedious drive to the local mall and instead reach for an iPad or smartphone and connect to retailers everywhere in the world. "The smart brick-and-mortar players," Forbes observed way back in 2012, "are adapting to the new realities. Take Macy's: The 154-year-old retail chain saw online sales rise 40% in 2011 while same-store sales grew just 5.3%. The company is transforming nearly 300 of its stores into distribution centers to speed up shipping for online consumers." And today more and more governments have taken a digital leaf from the e-commerce ebook and have made earnest efforts to engage their citizens online. A few governments, such as that of Estonia-popularly known as "e-Stonia," because of its early embrace of the Internet-have been way ahead of the curve. That country votes online, its legislative bodies meet online, and most routine government business is conducted online. Other governments, like that of the United States, have experienced notable failures to use the Internet effectively. Think of the disastrous rollout Affordable Care Act back in 2013. Still others-uhh, Russia comes to mind-have weaponized social media for the purposes of disseminating disinformation and (mis)shaping elections in the United States and other Western democracies. This has profoundly redefined the meaning of "public diplomacy." That national governments, will, like "the smart brick-and-mortar" merchants, have no choice but to conduct more and more of their activities in cyberspace is hardly a prognostication worthy of Nostradamus. For better and for worse, it is happening now. The bolder and far more consequential move from physical space to cyberspace will come not on the national level but in the international arena. The Internet has made all borders, all boundaries, permeable. Additionally, it has tended to transform hierarchical and centralized power structures into networks of peer-to-peer interactivity. What has already taken place as the transformation of brick-and-mortar commerce into cyberspace as e-commerce is both preview of and prelude to an era in which traditional diplomacy be will supplanted by cyberdiplomacy. The Folded Paper is about the transformation, with all its promise and threat. It is a vision, a plan, and a call to action. It is about becoming a "smart player" on the global stage and catching up to a technology already proliferating. It is about mastering that technology technically, politically, and morally to reinvent diplomacy for a hyperconnected world. It is about cyberdiplomacy.