Globalisation, new media and the Global Village.

Marshall McLuhan is crucial to the theories of new media and the global village. In simple terms, the global village is connectedness, all at once. In terms of globalisation and the global village, McLuhan argued that the world would evolve to be shrunk into “a single community with an all-inclusive nowness.” (Antecol 1997, p. 455). This relates to the global village and how with the development of the new modalities of media today, the world and its inhabitants will be increasingly connected and up-to-date on the issues of the world. This is particularly apparent with the increasing use of social media sites such as Twitter. In relation to the theory of all-inclusive oneness, this was especially apparent with the shooting of American teenager Mike Brown last year. Through twitter and other social media sites such as Instagram (for the use of videos) the world was almost instantaneously updated on the situation. This was an example of all-inclusive nowness as this was of world interest and was broadcast on many different news sites across the world. Social media and applications such as FaceTime and Skype also add to this idea of connectedness all at once. This is apparent as through social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter you can be talking with a friend who lives in the next suburb over, but also with Skype or FaceTime, you can be engaging in an audio or video call to someone on the other side of the world at the same time. However, McLuhan also introduced the idea that “our technologies are generations ahead of our thinking.” (McLuhan & Moos 2015, p.138). It can be thought that because new media is constantly evolving and changing that even trying to fathom what could be new media in 20 years from now could be beyond our realm of understanding. For example, it could have been thought to be impossible to be able to get a clear picture of Pluto 60 or 70 years ago but now, in 2015 we have many clear pictures of Pluto, all of which would have been unfathomable to people 60 to 70 years ago.