The Global Village: All you need is love
June 25th, 2007
We've been thinking about networks a lot lately. 40 years ago today, June 25, 1967, on the first ever live global television link, the Beatles sang a new song to 350 million people.
Three years before this performance Marshall McLuhan said, "the medium is the message". Subsequently, and especially in the last ten years we've seen humans coming together in numbers and ways that astound. How many emails are sent per day? How many people volunteer for hospice care to the homebound and aged? How many 501(c) organizations were created last year? How many members does Myspace have?
The answers to these questions are not what defines us. What defines us is the infrastructures(i.e. mediums) we've gone about building over the century that enable us to reach out to our neighbors. So what exactly is our message?
Seem fitting that the Beatles sang what they sang 40 years ago today.
Three years before this performance Marshall McLuhan said, "the medium is the message". Subsequently, and especially in the last ten years we've seen humans coming together in numbers and ways that astound. How many emails are sent per day? How many people volunteer for hospice care to the homebound and aged? How many 501(c) organizations were created last year? How many members does Myspace have?
The answers to these questions are not what defines us. What defines us is the infrastructures(i.e. mediums) we've gone about building over the century that enable us to reach out to our neighbors. So what exactly is our message?
Seem fitting that the Beatles sang what they sang 40 years ago today.