global village

It is known as village to a town located in a rural area, which has a very small number of dwellings and inhabitants. Global, for its part, is what refers to the globe or a set.

The idea of ​​a global village was developed by the Canadian Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980). This Canadian sociologist and philosopher played with two terms that seem contradictory (the village is something local, small in scale, while the global refers to the whole world) to explain the consequences of development of mass media.

Simplifying your theories we could say that, for McLuhan, the planet Land It became a kind of village of enormous dimensions since people, thanks to television, radio and other media, they can find out at any time what is happening anywhere. Thus, the Humanity The whole works like a village, where the villagers can find out what is happening immediately thanks to the reduced dimensions of the environment where they live.

McLuhan argues that the development of this global village changed the human being in its essence, since it altered from its way of communicating to social organization. In the global village, even symbolic issues may be worth more than real ones. An example of this is that a war, to cite one case, is not simply won by force on the battlefield, but must also be won in the media so that society knows and understands that a victory was obtained.

The global village thus supposes the disappearance of physical distances to generate knowledge. The immense flow of information available, on the other hand, implies that people access only one small part: the one that cuts and decides to show the mass media.

Numerous are the defenders and also the detractors that the global village has. Hence, the former consider that it is very important because it has allowed us to enjoy advantages such as these:
-We are more informed than ever, thanks to elements such as the Internet.
-We can establish direct and immediate communication through different means with people who are in another part of the world.
-We have become culturally enriched because we have access to the ways of understanding life, traditions and norms of any country. In other words, there is a more than remarkable cultural exchange that is rewarding for everyone.
-New technologies have made it possible to achieve important scientific advances to develop sectors such as the economy.

In the same way, there are also many people who are absolutely demonstrating against the global village. They position themselves like this because they consider that it has brought with it numerous disadvantages, such as these:
-The contamination has increased significantly.
-Above values, feelings and principles, the society of consumerism has imposed itself, where it seems that “you have so much, you are worth so much”, as a Manolo García song says.
-In order to be more powerful, there is no hesitation in “stepping on” the most disadvantaged countries in order to obtain the wealth they may have.
-New criminals such as cyberbullies have emerged.
-Ancient traditions and customs are being lost as well as face-to-face communication in favor of what is undertaken through the Internet.