Marshall McLuhan: The World is a Global Village

The emer­gence of “new media” and “social media” — it has all looked fair­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary, the begin­ning of some­thing entire­ly new. But, when you step back and con­sid­er it, these inno­va­tions mark per­haps just an accel­er­a­tion of a trend that began long ago — one that Mar­shall McLuhan, the famed com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­rist, first out­lined in the 1960s. The vin­tage clip above gives you a feel for this, and McLuhan him­self appears at around the 2:45 minute mark. As you watch this video, you start to real­ize how pre­scient McLuhan was, and how social media is almost the log­i­cal ful­fill­ment of the trend he saw emerg­ing.

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