GlobalVillages
Origins Of The Term
 
See our Definition as to how we use the term GlobalVillages. And also: Special, Importance, Vision

How did MarshallMcLuhan use the term global village and how are we using the term global villages?

FranzNahrada: There is no GlobalVillage if there are no GlobalVillages. Here we are musing on the relations between the two terms, i.e. the relation between physical place and online community.

- in the sense that Mc Luhan gave it - the new intensive quality of experience that the media inflicts on the consumer -, we need to understand that global communication needs issues. If these issues are not combined without our own vital interests, we will amuse ourselves to death. Note that McLuhan has shown very much interest in the village question and we received a "blessing" from his son Eric for our creative adaption of the term. The media that globalize experience will, if pushed to their extremity, expand local possibilities beyond any conceivable measure. Our task is to get an idea what could be the (positive) outcome.

- in the sense that we give to the term - yes we are talking of villages although the whole world thinks they are dead - also there cannot be a single village claiming to be a "global village". Only in the multitude of connected places can this term manifest reality. The reality of peope is in the place where they are, and if they do not consider their place an element of their identity they are not real. But if they do not understand that it needs the whole world to work with a place (like it takes a whole village to educate a child) they will never come to a full comprehension of what their place has to offer.

Why we say Global Villages

Geoffry Reggio, film director, once said to me: "We need to proceed from the Global Village to a Globe of Villages". That sentence was one of the finest gifts anybody ever gave to me. --Profiles/FranzNahrada

We have made up a page where we try to differ between "GlobalVillage" as the media pattern that McLuhan discovered and researched and "GlobalVillage" as the singular representation of the phenomenon of a kind of empowered, world-open neighborhood that reaches a new quality of life by solving the most local questions with the most global knowledge.

Justification of our usage of the term

The other usage of the term

Global Villages can als refer to the fragmentation of Cyberspace. Paul Saffo ( http://www.saffo.com/essays/globalvillages.php) wrote: "Not one but many global villages are emerging, as cultures use telecommunications and information technologies to reassert their identities on the world stage."

Niels Zurafki ( http://www.edupolis.de/konferenz2002/texte/forum1_text_zurawski.php) sees the same with a critical perspective: "Gleichzeitig besteht dabei auch die Gefahr einer Fragmentarisierung in neuen elektronischen Enklaven, die nicht nur jeder einzelnen Kultur einen Raum geben, sondern auch jeder Strömung innerhalb der Kultur. Ein konstruktiver Austausch würde dann nicht mehr stattfinden. Mit der Entstehung vieler kleiner “global villages" wäre nur noch die Geographie der Gruppen global, nicht aber ihr Anspruch transnational zu sein. Das Internet als solches ist somit nicht fähig neue Identitäten zu schaffen, sondern stellt lediglich die technischen und ideologischen Werkzeuge - in Form von techno-philosophischen Diskursen - für solche Projekte zur Verfügung."

How one use leads to the other:

Farokh Afshar, University of Guelph Guelph, Ont. wrote in the 1998 edition of Habitat International (no.22): "The discourse on habitat and human settlements is increasingly dominated by that of the global, mega-city. If the aim of those of us in the human settlements field are to improve our understanding of and action on habitat and human settlements, this, often exclusive, focus is a mistake. Our habitat is better understood and acted upon as a network of interwoven settlements and surrounding countryside, large and small, themselves interwoven within our larger ecosystem. In this network the habitat of our smaller settlements (smaller cities, towns, villages) and rural areas and our global village also plays a critical role. The assumption can be challenged that urbanization and the mega-city are the critical issues of habitat and human settlements. Evidence suggests that with some rurbanization there is also counter urbanization, the ruralization of cities, and, perhaps most important, a growing urbanization as city-country interactions intensify. Habitat for all and habitat for a healthy, sustainable planet demands our openness to these new concepts and realities. It demands an integrated, balanced, approach which helps a wide range of living settlement nodes, large and small, to nurture each other'. Global City and Global Village must go hand in hand. Our planetary and human health depends on it."

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