Cyber Millenium

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was the first author to discuss the world as a “global village” and humanity as a “global tribe” following their analysis of media, particularly television, in the sixties of last century . Despite not getting to know the Internet or the microcomputer revolution, his analysis proved prophetic. The mass media have turned the planet into a village, a global village but the village after all.This concept, its undoubted relevance, has been widely used, although it has exhausted its detractors. And it is this village or, rather, its reality, was rebuilt and destroyed by the media, it is true, but his description is inaccurate as the exclusive product of the communication system. There is more behind, much more. McLuhan, and after Derrick de Kerkhove will continue, his main disciple, develops a communicative theory extremely useful for understanding the articulation of modern global consciousness. If you are not convinced, visit Pete Cashmore. Communication networks and information are current global nervous system of humanity, “the neocortex” spoken of Javier Esteinou. But McLuhan’s theory on cultural remains and does not explain “the historical interests of the dynamics of power” (again Esteinou) that is framed.Technological and social transformations that have experienced information systems have a historical context, are neither neutral nor free, and this historical context is due to a great triumph: the universalist liberalism. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, emerging in the nineteenth century the three great ideologies that provide, in the words of Immanuel Wallerstein, “the language for all subsequent political debates within the capitalist world-economy”, I mean the conservatism, liberalism and socialism. Of these three forms of thought, the liberal will come as a big winner. Liberalism, as good encarnador of centrism, mediate between left and right to put their faith in one of the key premises of the Enlightenment: that rational thought and action are the way to salvation, that is, to progress. In fact, the ideology of progress will be one of the greatest contributions to modern liberalism.His rational reformism to please everyone, or at least appease (cushioning the revolutionary instincts of the working classes and the reactionary instincts of the wealthy classes.) Wallerstein can not be more accurate to say that over 150 years of political struggle continuously all the battles will remain within the playing rules of liberal ideology. But liberalism is essentially undemocratic. Theirs is a noble doctrine that preaches the “power of the best” and, while not the best defined by questions of blood (hereditary nobility) but for educational matters (culture acquired), the beneficiaries do not cease to be in a meritocracy . When this becomes universal liberalism is universalizing elitist ideology that seeks to avoid equally the reaction of conservatism and radicalism of the revolutionaries.To spread throughout the planet, along the twentieth century, after World War II, aims to make his doctrine of material progress and a universal doctrine must be said that nearly succeeds. While it certainly remains the dominant ideology, its monopoly of rationality and progress has ended.