Getting Back to the Future

I'm currently reading Educating for Global Competence by Veronica Boix-Mansilla and Tony Jackson, but I keep getting distracted by one thing: the sci-fi tie-in.  Thus far, chapter 1 is talking about how the world is getting flatter -- which I would have called getting smaller.  People are migrating faster than ever before, employers are employing, manufacturing, and selling internationally, and we have to figure out how to prepare kids for the rapidly evolving world that they'll be faced with by the time they graduate.  All this boils down to a global economy of minds, people, and money where national borders mean less now than they ever have before.  If this is, indeed, what is happening, then take this progression a step farther into the future, and we'll find that national borders will have about as much significance as state borders have now.  Each country will have its own laws, language, and identity, but being a world citizen will be the more common way of self-identification.

The thing is, in just about every science fiction book I can think of where space travel exists and there have probably been encounters with aliens, Earth is ruled by a global government.  In one of those books, I would be a "citizen of Earth," an "Earthling" or possibly a "Terran".  Only in stories set in the near future would someone like me consider themselves to be an American, and it would probably have to be a time travel or post-appocolyptic tale for me to identify myself as a Marylander.

So, are we truly moving toward a world government?  I might not mind it if we are.  Taking another look at those stories, you'll frequently also find that good ol' Earth (or Terra) has moved beyond the need to make war on itself.  We must remember, though, that all the cultures of the world are well worth preserving.  Diversity is a beautiful thing, and when we try to stir the melting pot to such an extent that peoples' rich backgrounds are stripped away, we trade something precious for something both uniform and dull.