Abstract
The electronic “global village” envisioned by McLuhan 50 years ago is now fully operational. Communications technologies are expanding our connectivity at an accelerating rate. Yet despite their obvious impact on how we all live and work, it’s not easy to grasp the depth of this transformation or its implications for our future, in part because our social and economic institutions are evolving much more slowly. This essay focuses on one specific consequence of the shift to electronic media – that they’re changing how we understand communication itself, both conceptually and in our everyday lives. As background, I compare the emergence of computerized media with the much slower transition that took place in ancient times, from oral to literate culture. As written text gradually became the dominant medium of cultural evolution, it fostered a distanced, objective mode of thought that made deeper levels of interpersonal connection seem irrelevant to the serious business of civilization. Today the new media vastly extend the power of published text, but they also revive the immediacy of real-time participation that belongs to oral culture. They make possible a new appreciation of the depth and complexity of communications systems, both at the physical level and in human interaction.
Conrad Dale Johnson