Eternal Present? From McLuhan’s Global Village to Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) was a Canadian philosopher, philologist, literary scholar and media expert. Andy Warhol famously said that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. As for McLuhan’s fame, it stretched over decades. His ideas that technology can influence and shape society have been widely discussed up to this day. McLuhan’s work is regarded as an important conceptual contribution to media theory, and his term ‘global village’ is widely used by students and scholars, practitioners and theorists in the field of communication. The authors of this article attempt to analyze the contribution of McLuhan, as a communication expert and influential technodeterminist, to understanding the media of the 21st century. It is concluded that, despite the abundant criticism regarding the naivety and “unscientific” nature of his approach, the lack of empirical evidence for the theory he put forward, his passion for technology, as well as his belief in the decisive role of the media in the development of culture and society, McLuhan’s ideas still inspire researchers. The concept of ‘global village’ in the modern information world has not only retained its relevance - it describes the laws of the functioning of the digital society in the best possible way. The Internet and social networks have confirmed Marshall’s postulate that communication technologies enable people to become increasingly involved in one another’s lives.

Keywords

• global village
• media
• electronic communication
• technological determinism
• internet
• society