More on communication and technology

A relationship of exclusivity and choice creates the difficulty with the notion of a global village, created through communication technology. A village has one forum, a single mode in which people meet – in one language, in face to face communication, with the caveat that often there is no choice but to interact with someone. A village has some feature of co-dependance, particularly in terms of a commons area or shared resources. The internet and other media technologies employ processes that allow a wide variety of choice in communication, with multiple channels, codes and addresses which create very little opportunity for random encounters. In order to get anywhere on the internet, you must know an exact site URL, and have foreknowledge of the proper codes to use to access the information that has been put online. The same applies for email, or even telephones. The people in a global village are the people we already know, our families and friends who we have met through more chance, random encounters. For this reason, I believe that the internet, and communication technology serves a negative purpose for the goal of creating cultural harmony or understanding. It allows for the intensification and maintenance of very particular relationships already readily apparent to us before the internet existed. It does not necessarily create new bonds, only affects old ones.

Duncan