Buzz word - Global Village

Tuesday October 27
What relationship can you draw between the ideas of the global village and collective intelligence and how this will impact your professional field of work.

According to Wikipedia ‘ Global Village is a term associated with Marshal McLuhan and popularised in his books in which McLuhan describes how the globe has been contracted into a village by electric technology. Instantaneous movement of information from every quarter to every point at the same time. In bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion, electric speed has heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree’(2009). It sounds difficult to comprehend doesn’t it?

In this blog entry, I am going to attempt to answer what relationship I can draw between the ideas of the global village and collective intelligence and how will this impact my professional field of work.

According to the text book, collective intelligence refers to the 'capacity of networked ICT's to exponentially enhance the collective pool of social knowledge by simultaneously expanding the extent of human interactions enabled by communications networks’(Flew 2009). Boorstin (1978) argued that electronic communication would bind humans into a global community, in other words one local culture. I couldn’t agree more with Boorstin. The fact that he argued this theory over 30 years ago has me stunned.

In terms of the relationship I draw between the concept of a global village and collective intelligence the first thing that comes to mind is communication. Concepts like computer mediated communication, networks and wiki’s have all allowed professionals in the public relations field to communicate much faster and easier. An example of this is the Disgusting Domino’s case where 2 employees uploaded a video on YouTube, within a day of the uploading Dominos’ public relations and crisis communication team were on board to rectify the situation(2009; Baron 2009). This is an example of how communication spreads like wildfire (in the PR profession) and has allowed this business to go from centralised business intelligence to a more collective intelligence as people make more and more connections with the company than ever before.

As a society I believe we have embraced new communication mediums leading us further and further into this global village theory. It has allowed us as humans connected via the internet to move beyond the idea of a global online village and to perhaps become one network of connections. During the lecture, it was noted that 1.7 billion of 6.7 billion people have access to the internet. When you have a connection of this type, a connection of 1.7 billion people worldwide all connected to the one network you get something pretty cool. It’s not just the 6 degrees of separation anymore; the internet is bringing that separation down at a rapid speed.
The only problem I find with this type of fact is what happens when almost everyone is connected? Is that a good or a bad thing? It could be good in the sense of communication however it’s not always a good thing. In conclusion, collective intelligence and global village terms help communication spread across different means on the internet. It has allowed the public relations profession to further develop and monitor programs and plans in place and allows for quick responses to issues or problems that arise with communication networks.





(2009). "Global Village (term)." Retrieved 27/10/2009, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_village_(term).

(2009). "Online PR Crisis Example- Dominos Pizza." Retrieved 20/10/2009, 2009, from http://www.2sticksdigital.com.au/pr2.php?PR-Crisis-Example---Dominos-25.

Baron, G. (2009). "Dominos explains its response to the YouTube video crisis." Crisisblogger Retrieved 20/10/09, 2009, from http://crisisblogger.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/dominos-explains-its-response-to-the-youtube-video-crisis/

Flew, T. (2009). New Media: an introduction, Oxford University Press.