The Global Village in 2014.

It is pretty unbelievable to think, that in 1960, Marshall McLuhan had foresight and understanding of the global village in which we live in today. Globalisation is something that in 2014, you cannot escape. Whether it is tuning into overseas news broadcasts like Al-Jazeera or the BBC, to getting your daily coffee fix at Starbucks, or purchasing a Japanese car; the lines of the world have been blurred by this ever present form of interconnectedness. True, that McLuhan couldn’t predict what form of new media would connect individuals, however he had a calculated understanding that this new form of media would change the way in which we see the world.

The Internet age

There is no doubt that the invention of the Internet has again changed what it means to be apart of the global village. We are now connected to each other 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. McLuhan stated in that 1960 interview that media has ‘made our world into a single unit, where everybody gets the message, and all the time’. With the introduction of social media and the ever expanding technology of smart phones, laptop computers and tablets, this last point is properly realised. Social media has made us available for communication in an instant. You only have to send a text, Facebook message, tweet or an email from your smart phone and you are linked with another person — be it in your living room, or with friends on the other side of the world.

As the global village keeps expanding, so does the freedom of individuals in that village. In the past, the media had all the information, but only the most important parts of that information were available to individuals. With the Internet, everyday people have the power to create their own content for the consumption of others, and with it has seen the rise of ‘citizen journalism’. Individuals now only have to tweet to get in contact with major media companies about developing news stories. For example, people can send video footage taken on their smart phone and send it directly to news media companies via the Internet. In the instance of the Iranian election protests of 2009/2010, protesters used Twitter to notify other users about what was actually going on when the Government tried to censor such information getting through to the public. This event has changed the way major protests around the world are fought; they can be easily organised through social media.

The global village in 2014 is definitely thriving; we are all vastly more connected in more ways, but especially through the Internet. McLuhan’s understanding of the evolving global village in 1960's only reiterates that it will continue to thrive and grow as new media and technology advances into the future.