The construct is often misunderstood as a utopian reflection of reality, and one which promotes the idea of homogenization. The author himself was often ambivalent about the outcomes of ‘electric contraction’. In 1964, for example, he writes: ‘the aspiration of our time for wholeness, empathy and depth of awareness is a natural adjunct of electric technology....There is a deep faith to be found in this attitude – a faith that concerns the ultimate harmony of all being’ (1964, p. 5). In other writings, however, McLuhan refers to the global village as a place of ‘terror’, ‘uncertainty’ and ‘tribalism’. The ‘global village’ idea has been co-opted by politicians, businesspeople and academics of all shades to justify and illustrate their particular worldviews. Employed uncritically it fails to capture the unevenness of access to electronic technology that characterizes the world. There is no doubt, however, that by injecting notions of cultural interaction and ‘stretched’ space into the debate the idea influenced a number of subsequent theorizations, including those of Robertson (1992) and Giddens (1990), as we explore below. McLuhan was also influential in critical media studies and media ecology where his notions of stretched networks that transmit cultural markers are analysed.