Global Village

Conceptual Overview

Computer-mediated communication is often described as allowing close interaction among geographically[Page 559] dispersed individuals. Although earlier communication technologies such as the telephone and postal mail allowed such interaction, these media are comparatively less flexible and socially “thinner” than computermediated communication. Also, spaces for computermediated communication, especially the World Wide Web, allow people to have instantaneous access to detailed information about events everywhere across the globe. These three features of computer-mediated communication—close personal interaction, ease in establishing personal ties, and instantaneous information about everyday events—are evocative of the social experience in close-knit communities such as those that develop in villages. The collapse of geographical and temporal barriers allowed by computer-mediated communication gives these features a global reach.

For McLuhan, who first interpreted these features of computer-mediated communication as creating a global village, the use of these technologies ushered in a new era in human history. This historical period followed what he called the “Gutenberg Galaxy”—a time when the printed word, especially in the shape of books, was the dominant medium for exchanging ideas. McLuhan's views on the global village, however, were far less optimistic than the one this label currently evokes. McLuhan argued that the experience of the global village would be one of terror and oppression. Terror was the result of the access to information about events everywhere in the world. In a global village, every event has global repercussions. There are no independent places in which to find shelter. Everything affects everyone. Oppression is the result of others' access to information about one's action. The awareness of this heightened visibility leads to what Soshana Zuboff has termed “anticipatory conformity”: individuals refrain from any behavior they interpret as deviant because of the constant fear of being detected. McLuhan also did not espouse the technological determinism that characterizes many of the current accounts of the global village. These accounts see technology as the driving force of human action.

The global village is, in this approach, an inevitable consequence of technological progress. For McLuhan, the changes brought about by the diffusion of computer-mediated communication triggered social change, but did not define its content. For McLuhan, the decisive factor for the consequences of the global village was agents' awareness of computer-mediated communication's effects. If agents were aware of the totalitarian, terror-inducing power of computermediated communication, then they could choose to use this technology otherwise, to create the current ideal of the global village—a global community of equals committed to social progress. When computermediated communication became more widespread, the global village started to be used to refer to the international use of computer-mediated communication, which had a number of positive features. This view espoused a fast-approaching future in which networked computers would be available to the vast majority of the world population. The world was seen as populated by agents with enough formal education to have a sophisticated understanding of world events in a variety of fields. These agents not only had the ability to follow world events but also the willingness to do so. What is more, they were not content with knowing what was happening in the world around them. They wanted to act on those events to promote a communal experience of everyday life.

...