McLuhan came up with the term "Global Village". I remember that term being bandied about a lot in the early days of the internet, which was going to turn us int

McLuhan came up with the term "Global Village". I remember that term being bandied about a lot in the early days of the internet, which was going to turn us into a global village: one big happy worldwide community in open communication. I rolled my eyes at the idea then. But at some point...I came across what he'd actually written (or anyway, a summary of it). It was not a cheesy Disney "It's a Small World" vision, at all. His point was that a world centered on books is different than one centered on speech--direct or online. There's a sense of truth: it's that thing resting on the shelves in your public library. There's only so much room there, and there's a competition to contribute to it. Each field had a few recognized authorities, and then a handful of dissidents (who were in a direct debate with the authorities). The bar to joining those groups was high, and there were a whole slew of gatekeepers. And we knew what an authority looked like: they wore glasses and tweed suits and you saw them being interviewed on TV (or, earlier, you read their editorials in the paper). If you met a guy on the street who had figured it all out, you could roll your eyes and tell them to get writing: if and when you read their book, you could consider taking them seriously. But with the onslaught of new media, we're moving to something like a global village. A real village, recognizable to someone who grew up in one: a place with gossips and busybodies, a tribal place where rumors spread wildly and every 'fact' is he-said-vs-she-said. There's a cacophony of voices and perspectives. The people who talk the most and the loudest are the authorities. An authority is just a talking head on a screen, being shouted at by other talking heads--and anybody can get a camera and become one on YouTube. Note that the older, book-oriented world isn't correct. It can be wrong, and resistant to change, and the authorities can all be stuffy old white guys propagating their specific idea of the world. But it does give most of society a sense of structure. There is the general sense that there's some bedrock truth down there under all the the noise and debate. Not so in a global village. Truth is just what we decide it is, today, and tomorrow (if a different set of busybodies and gossips gain the upper hand) it may be different. Your truth might not be the same as my truth--and maybe we ought not to be talking with each other anyway, since we're from different 'truth' camps. If we're in a debate, there is no authority we can reference: no library, no expert, no foundational text. It's just your word versus mine, or your friends vs my friends. How do you even go about establishing that sort of central authority in a system based on transient, immediate interactions? Truth and authority are temporary, and communal. There is no center. I remember thinking, back in ~2009: "This guy's got a point." And now...?