Global Village

The concept of the global village can be seen as another subdivision of globalisation. As times have changed so has the idea of the global village, which has now progressed into a phenomenon where we are constantly linking together across the globe. This link has allowed us to connect with those at all ends of the world as fast as it takes us to interact with those who live in the same area.

The electronic nervous system, the ‘media’, as portrayed by McLuhan, was the attachment and the participating power running with all ends of the world, to create a combined village. If we analyse our own global village in this contemporary society using this historical concept we notice several characteristics that it is made up of, the main feature being Social Networking within the World Wide Web. Television stands far apart from this new technology of the Internet, and now more recently the upbringing of the ‘Smartphone’, these however, being a glance of some of the new modalities which our global village is joint with. We can say that this global village will be an ever-evolving concept as new technologies compliment the present and most likely the future of the global village, as it is a constant development. McLuhan says ‘involuntarily we are getting rid of individualism’ meaning we are connecting as a group unintentionally.

I have grown to believe that our present global village is reflective of media not as an individual village, but made up of a combination of different villages and therefore forming a larger nation. The nation is made up different media platforms, acting as the smaller villages. These media platforms being, social media, online shopping, blogs, apps, to name a few, each having their own community, social norms and principles.

As suggested by McLuhan, we can say the global village is in fact a group term and therefore slightly dishonours the idea of individualism. The notion of the global village and how it operates continues to be questioned by all generations of the present nation.

References:

The Hot and Coll Interview (p.89) in: McLuhan, M. Media Research: Technology, Art and Communication. (http://encore.deakin.edu.au/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2971220)

Marshall McLuhan — The World is a Global Village (CBC TV), 2009, youtube, future of health technology, retrieved 28/07/2014, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeDnPP6ntic>