Becoming A Risident Of The Global Village

Becoming A Resident Of The Global Village

Jessica Porter

Community College Of Baltimore County

Abstract

Our world is becoming smaller every passing day, due to new innovations in technology.  Marshall Mcluhan coined the phenomenon the global village.  What does the world shrinking mean for America?  As of right now, Americans are being left behind in the new web base market will that change?

            When most people think of a village they imagine a tiny town surrounded by rolling hills with picturesque scenery that would be post card worthy.  Rarely do people think of the largest village there is, that happens to take up the whole world!  The global village which is always expanding in size and diversity thanks to technological advances.  Although you can’t really live there billions of people visit it each day when they turn on their phones, computers, and tablets. 

            Americans have a well-deserved reputation of not caring or paying attention to the rest of the world and the people in it.  Today that is becoming harder and harder to do.  Our world is shrinking not literally, but every time a person gets online for the first time our world gets a little smaller in size.  Take for example if you wanted to write a letter and send it to the other side of the world thirty years ago it would take weeks for it to reach its destination. Now a days, you can send an email in the matter of seconds to the same destination and other destinations simultaneously. This is just one of many examples of how the world has become smaller.

            Is the United States of America ready for a smaller world?  My personal opinion is no we are not.  Every day with more and more countries opening up to the international market thanks to the internet American becomes less influential in the world market.  With standard of living and minimum wage on the rise each year in the states, more companies are looking outside of America for cyber employees.  This is called outsourcing, which can have both negative and positive effects.  These employees work longer hour for less wages giving companies a more competitive edge over competition.   Which results in less jobs on the market here at home and more money going out of the country.  I think it is safe to assume sometime in the future more American workers will join this global market place, hopefully we don’t wait too long.

References

Richard D. Bucher (2004) Diversity Consciousness Opening Our Minds to People, Cultures, and Opportunities Fourth Edition. (9-11)