Our Global Village

The current global village is not what McLuhan experienced or witnessed, but it is the reality of his predictions. The modern global village can only be characterized by increased inter connectivity or interplay. Technology has made the world a village where people can communicate from any part of the globe simultaneously and in real time.

The main prediction made by McLuhan is on electronic inter connectivity, which in today’s global village is the internet or World Wide Web (Mullen, 2006, p. 373). Technology has played a significant role in developing in terms of contemporary characteristics. Technology is invented or improved each and every movement. The rate of innovation has significantly increased. This means that older technologies are being forgotten instantly. Another major characteristic of today’s global village is technology absorption and media consumption. Today’s average person around the world has to access the internet or use a communication device each day in their life. Teenagers of today spend hours every day on different screens from TVs, phones, to video games (Sund, Jolls & Walkosz, 2008, p. 4). The rate of consumption has significantly increased with the rate of technological innovations. Moreover, local can now be interpreted to global. In this case, where certain media or content was considered local, it can now be viewed or accessed worldwide. Most TV shows of today have internet access sites for viewers around the world to access.

The modalities of media can be witnessed where technology has taken up the role of instilling morals or good practices in society. Parents can only rely on software or digital filters to ensure that their children watch what is appropriate or moral (Sund, Jolls & Walkosz, 2008, p. 5). The main disadvantage with the new global village and media modalities is accessibility to everything. Information sharing has resulted in both the positive and negative implications. Additionally, another significant media modality is the aspect of reproduction. (Sund, Jolls & Walkosz, 2008, p. 10) Media content is always reproduced as a different content based on the demand of consumers. Movies are constantly reproduced to offer a sense of continuity, which is basically in line with what McLuhan predicted. McLuhan, (2014, p. 26) believed that the new mode of communication will call for pattern recognition. The issue of reproduction or continuous reproduction now places increased controversy on McLuhan’s Hot and Cool debate (McLuhan, 2014, p. 86). The current media offers continuous productions or episodes on TV while movies are produced sequentially after a year. The new media modalities call for increased involvement with the audience. All the media contents of today’s global village call for increased involvement with the new introduction of technological features such as 3-dimension.

In conclusion, the current global village has changed to beyond what McLuhan predicted. The world is full of ever-changing technologies that are still to be explored or adopted. Nonetheless, the pace at which the global village has changed is remarkable. Media modalities have changed in many ways to utilize technology as well as the new global village.

References

McLuhan, M., 2014. Media Research: Technology, Art and Communication. Hoboken : Taylor and Francis.

Mullen, M 2006, ‘Coming to Terms with the Future He Foresaw : Marshall McLuhan’s ‘Understanding Media’’, Technology and Culture, 2, p. 373.

Sund, A., Jolls, T & Walkosz, B., 2008, Global/Local: Media Literacy for the Global Village. [online] Center for Media Literacy . Available at: < http://www.medialit.org/sites/default/files/33_globallocal.pdf>[Accessed 26 Jul. 2015]