Global village

Global Village ( English Global Village ) is a term from media theory that Marshall McLuhan coined in 1962 in his book "Die Gutenberg-Galaxis" ( The Gutenberg Galaxy ) and formulated in his last book The Global Village . He is referring to the modern world, which is growing together into a “ village ” through electronic networks . Today the term is mostly used as a metaphor for the Internet and the World Wide Web . You can get in touch with people from all over the world via the internet without changing your location.

Although the term is a toponym , McLuhan understands it to be a historical epoch rather than a place. According to him, it immediately follows the so-called " Gutenberg Galaxy ", that is, the book age. Its beginnings can be seen in the invention of the alphabets ; The decisive breakthrough came with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg . It was it that made the general acquisition and use of documents and thus a large amount of information possible.

The global village now supersedes the Gutenberg galaxy (McLuhan wrote the book in the 1960s). Individuality is being given up in the Global Village in favor of a collective identity . McLuhan did not describe the term with the positive connotation it often has today. He warned of the possibility of abuse, of totalitarianism and terrorism if the dangers posed by the new media were not properly responded to.

The term is generally no longer used in modern media theory. Rather, one speaks today of the McLuhan galaxy ( Manuel Castells ), which represents the transition to the Turing galaxy ( Volker Grassmuck ), or one uses the general expression electronic age to denote the end of the Gutenberg galaxy.

See also

• Global City

literature

• Marshall McLuhan: The Gutenberg Galaxy. 1962, ISBN 0802060412 .
• Marshall McLuhan, Bruce R. Powers: The Global Village. The path of the media society into the 21st century. 1995, ISBN 387387217X .