Marshall McLuhan on the Global Village
UX Interaction Design September 22nd, 2008
I recently came across this famous forecast from Marshall McLuhan on what he coined the “Global Village”:
“The global village is a world in which you don’t necessarily have harmony, you have extreme concern with everybody else’s business. And much involvement in everybody else’s life. [...] And so the global village is as big as a planet, and as small as a village post office.”
What is interesting is how the increasingly connected culture McLuhan was concerned about in the 1960s is even moreso with respect to the blogosphere and modern communication channels. The ‘big brother’ fears aside, his predictions of the shift toward audience interaction and location-independent tribalism was spot on.
This was from Peter Hirschberg’s TED talk, starting about 14:10 in.