The Global Village

-Mary Beth


           Mark Kurlansky, author of The Year That Rocked The World, depicts the year 1968 as a time when everyone just wanted to take a stand and rebel against something, anything. It didn't matter what they were rebelling over, just that it made them feel important and part of a movement. Conveniently, in 1968, the Vietnam War was something that virtually everyone could agree upon rebelling against, and so that is exactly what they did.

         The introduction of technology was a major contributer to such rebellion. The television, specifically, let rebellious individuals and groups see what others were doing to stop Vietnam. It introduced them to the concept of strikes, marches and sit-ins. It became an eye-opener for the post World War II generation. Never before had individuals had such access to such diverse and foreign locations. "It made everyone very aware of what everyone else was doing, and it was thrilling because for the first time in human experience the important, distant events of the day were immediate" (p. xix).

          They called it the "global village," because in a way, technology shrank the globe. Quite frankly, "we will never again feel the thrill of the first moon shots or the first broadcasts from outer space the way we did when it was new to us," like it was then. In today's world, new and exciting information is presented to us everyday from various locations all over the globe. It is something we take for granted. In turn, it has shaped the ideology and the moral intelligence (not necessarily for the better) of the more recent generations.