Global Village

This is one of the concepts started by Marshall Mcluhan profesor of English literature , media and communication theorist and the patron saint and initiator of the Wired magazine . At a first sight the term global village is composed from two contrasting element the word global that implies globalization that is a vast process and the word village that is not really connected to what we see as predictions of the globalization phenomenon , the twenty first century is the century of the urban , and the economical forces that come together with globalization can be best observed in the urban landscape ; the village is slowly disappearing . So the what does mean global village what is the meaning of this term or concept . looking closer to this concept you can discover that the global village is not a material tridimesional concept it does not exist in the real material world , it is an concept related to the electronic age that was one of the fascinations of Mcluhan and one of the areas in witch he was fascinated and made predictions related to this new age the electronic age or in our days the digital age . What is interesting about Mcluhan is the fact that he did not make predictions related to aliens or outherspace visitors of to all kinds of futuristic predictions that we are acoustomed with but he started seeing planet earth under the forces of globalization and the electronic age becoming the new space of exploration these phenomenons making the territory of the planet much more dense, fertile and misterieus than before, because of globalization thins become bigger but In the same time much more complicated too .
So back to the global village concept what does it mean and how does it function ? The global village is “inhabited “by 21 century people ,that are all connected trough digital media . The global village is virtual and it functions with the help of networks that make information flow faster , usually the community is structured around a series of subjects that are commune to all of the village members . The interesting and new thing about the village are the “inhabitants “ of the community ; until recently a village was formed around a theory that was material and real with a population that consisted from the same people , inhabitants of the same race and origin that where speaking the same language .this concept is outdated in the case of the global village that is virtual and the virtual inhabitants of this place are more or less of the same origin , they are people that live in different parts of the world that are connected trough a digital network in today’s world the word wide web . The inhabitanst are connected and are part of the global village because they share the same passion or interest for a series of things or just because they started contact and developed communication with the other members of the global village . Multiple activities can bond together in today’s world people , for exaple the virtual gamers communities that are an early form of global village ;they spend time together in the same virtual generated space this making them bond together around an activity , anuther exaple that can be connected to this concept is the Second Life game that brings together notions of global village with a form of virtual avatar that one character is building in a period of time , what is interesting about this game is the fact that virtual objects have real monetary value, money can be translated from the virtual to the real world . So this kind of translations or functions can be part of the composition of the global village . The citizens of the global village will have daily common activities that will be shared between the members of the community . They will share informations and all kinds of cultural assets that are common to them and that are interesting for the village members .
Other forms of global village tipe of behavior can be seen in the photosharing communities like Flickr where there are groups formed and centerd around one subject or one topic of common interest . The village of the future will imply much more than only photosharing , or comment display , the global village will become more or less a community with political and economical oriented activities , the members will be able to exchange from material goods to all kind of types of informations for their prosumer needs . The distance between people will not be a problem anymore because of the interconnectivity generated by the Web .