Global village (term)

Global Village (English Global Village ) is a term used in media theory, the Marshall McLuhan in 1962 in his book " The Gutenberg Galaxy " (The Gutenberg Galaxy ) coined and formulated in his last book, The Global Village. He is referring to the modern world which is growing by electronic networks to a " village". Today, the term is most often used as a metaphor for the Internet and the World Wide Web. Without changing its location, you can get in contact via the internet with people from all over the world.

Although the term is a toponym, McLuhan understands by it more of a historical era as a place. It follows, according to him directly to the so-called " Gutenberg Galaxy ", so the book age. Its beginnings can be recognized as early as the invention of alphabets, the breakthrough did not come until the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. They only made ​​the general acquisition and use of documents and thus a large amount of information possible.

The global village would the Gutenberg galaxy now replace ( McLuhan wrote the book in the sixties ). Individuality would be abandoned in favor of a global village collective identity. McLuhan did not describe the concept with the positive connotation, which it often has today. He warned of possibilities of abuse, before totalitarianism and terrorism if it were not responded adequately to the risks posed by the new media.

The term is no longer used in modern media theory in general. Rather, we now speak of the McLuhan Galaxy (Manuel Castells ), which represents the transition to the Turing Galaxy ( Volker Grassmuck ), or you can use the general expression electronic age, to denote the end of the Gutenberg Galaxy.