The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century [Paperback]

The Global Villageextends the visionary work Marshall McLuhan first offered in his pioneeringUnderstanding Mediato today's worldwide, integrated electronic network, proposing a detailed conceptual framework in terms which the technological advances of the past two decades may be understood. At the heart the book is the argument that today's users of technology are caught between two very different ways of perceiving the world. On the one hand there is what the authors refer to as Visual Space--the linear, quantitative mode of perception that is characteristic of the Western world; on the other hand there is Acoustic Space--the holistic, qualitative reasoning of the East, toward which all of the latest technologies are pushing us.The authors warn, however, that this movement towards Acoustic Space may not go smoothly. Indeed, McLuhan and Powers argue that with the advent of the global village--the result of worldwide communications--these two worldviews are slamming into each other at the speed of light, asserting that the key to peace is to understand both these systems simultaneously. Adopting a refreshingly impartial approach, the authors seek to do today what McLuhan did so successfully twenty-five years ago--to look around the corner of the coming world, and to help us all be prepared for what we will find there.Extending the visionary early work of the late Marshall McLuhan,The Global Village, one of his last collaborative efforts, applies that vision to today's worldwide, integrated electronic network.When McLuhan's groundbreakingUnderstanding Mediawas published in 1964, the media as we know it today did not exist. But McLuhan's argument, that the technological extensions of human consciousness were racing ahead of our ability to understand their consequences, has never been more compelling. And if the mediumisthe message, as McLuhan maintained, then the message is becoming almost impossible to decipher.InThl3†