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.