A Global Village

When Marshall McLuhan called our social world, a ‘global village,’ he was making a point about how our world today has been shrunk as a result of the communication age. International interactions online are a daily occurrence, and the people of the world are constantly connecting and collaborating.

Thomas Friedman made an almost identical point during his talk about his book, The World is Flat, at MIT. He said that we are currently in the 3rd era of globalization, characterized by individuals and small groups globalizing. “It’s shrinking the world from size small to size tiny, and flattening the global economic playing field at the same time.” More players are allowed on the economic scene as a result of communication technology.

The implications of living in a global village are transforming the social world. As diversity grows in the business scene, more accommodations are being made for people of different languages, cultural and religious backgrounds. As Bucher states in Diversity Consciousness, we can’t pretend that differences don’t exist. We have to learn to be sensitive to other cultures and realize that people from different backgrounds or cultures may not think the same way about everything as we do.  As the global village brings people together, there is hope that it will encourage understanding.

References:

Bucher, Richard D., Diversity Consciousness, Opening our Minds to People, Cultures, and Opportunities, Fourth Edition, 2013

Friedman, Thomas L., “The World is Flat”, 2005, retrieved from http://video.mit.edu/watch/the-world-is-flat-9145/