The ‘global village’ was mentioned briefly in the first lecture, and it’s a concept I’m only peripherally aware of, so it seemed a good place to start . . .
“Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence. [...] Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time. [...] In our long striving to recover for the Western world a unity of sensibility and of thought and feeling we have no more been prepared to accept the tribal consequences of such unity than we were ready for the fragmentation of the human psyche by print culture.”
Key Points:
- the printing [and movable type] gave rise to individualistic fragmented culture, giving the individual means to learn independently- ergo, an increased sense of self and position within a larger world
- the universality of electronic media will cause an effective return to collective consciousness of pre-printing press era
- the infinite accessibility of information, goods and services will reinforce instant gratification culture and may cause a return to the lack of curiosity and awareness among the populous and increased passivity, a la Fahrenheit 451
- communicative technologies inherently shape the self-perception, psychology, behavioural patterns and communication habits of the individual, ergo, of society
- the importance of maintaining awareness of a medium’s cognitive effects in order to prevent possible negative effects, eg. a n increasingly passive population
- technology – whether the printing press or electronic – has no morality as such, but has far-reaching cognitive social effects. Knowledge and exploitation of these effects by either ‘ruling classes’ or the individual could lead to effective manipulation of populous
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Mcluhan
Points to explore:
Blogosphere-
- gives sense of interconnectedness in a greater human consciousness
- ‘no man is an island’ – we now not just peninsulas, but individuals inextricably linked to all those who participate in our network. Ideas of possession of information and original thought may reduce due to symbiotic interrelation created
- blog services such as wordpress, blogger etc allow the lay person an outlet without any illusion of necessary skill or exclusivity, as is often the case with static webpages. Therefore the boundary between the skilled and unskilled blurs, as does the distinction between broadcaster and audience
- does this lead to a lack of appreciation of the skills of others? The idea that we can have anything we want and that we all deserve to be heard is a utopian one, but, taken to extremes and combined with passive culture, could lead to such qualities being taken for granted and loss of the perception that rewards must be worked for and, effectively, a world of spoiled children
- erodes sense of distance, time and difference, thereby giving individual unprecented access to the thoughts and perceptions of others
- is it possible to maintain a fully developed sense of self within a collective consciousness, or are we doomed to become the Borg?
- does one then measure one’s identity against that of others, mot merely as comparison, but as the sum of self-perception?
- if I am one of many elements within a greater consciousness, am I somehow accountable to or reliant on the goodwill of the other elements in this consciousness?
- if McLuhan’s Global Village manifests, will it be as the convergence of unaware processes on the part of the populous, or as the result of deliberate effort [either by individuals, government or broadcasters etc]?
