McLuhan's Realization

I wonder if Marshall McLuhan would have been pleased or terrorized to find so many of his predictions come true. The “Global Village” he described is getting smaller every day, and the trends described in the Horizon Report certainly do not reverse this movement. The Horizon Report shows us how the “network” is continuing to infiltrate more of our academic and personal life and intertwining them. As I will discuss in this post, this trend has both great befits and serious cautions to be considered.

The Horizon report once again emphasizes the importance of the “web” in our everyday life. However, this is hardly news to anyone living in the modern world. To me the more important meta-trend of the document is the increased importance and power given to the individual. The new technologies extend the capabilities of an individual to heights not imagined only a few short years ago. Portable devices connected to the mobile network create armies of reporters able to report on events to blogs and Twitter feeds faster then any multi-million dollar media outlet. Collaboration webs allow for equitable contribution from even the most junior team member working on an important project. In the most basic level this new technology extends our voice, just as a soapbox may have in Town Square centuries ago. We now have a soapbox that extends around the world.  

In the eyes of McLuhan no extension can be had without a similar redaction of capabilities. In this case I believe that these technological trends will result in a loss of our physical voice or rather the loss of the social skills to interact with the people around us. In a world where relationships and collaborations are built entirely within the network, what need is there to deal with the surly fellow the next office over. With so much free data, free data analysis and “mashup” tools available an individual can complete research it may have taken an entire team to do just a few years ago. We no longer have to forge alliances with people of differing backgrounds or philosophical views, because a like-minded colleague is always only a click away. Eventually, our very ability to be locally social creatures will begin to atrophy.
Of course this increased power has secondary benefits. When people can gain fame simply from the number of friends on their Myspace page or from a “grassroot” video placed on YouTube a certain sense of entrepreneurship is revived. In the past the barriers of entrepreneurial success seemed daunting. The startup money, the limits of your audience, and other obstacles all worked to stifle such dreaming. Now a new generation knows that with an Internet connection and an inexpensive computer anything is possible.

Of course mankind will begin to miss what it has made obsolete. With “Social Operating Systems” drawing webs of people across the global village we will begin to loose connection to our actual village. I predict that people will yearn for actual community in the face of this Internet ghettoization.