The phony intimacy of the global village

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading Graham Petrie's 1970 book on Francois Truffaut, and I came across this wonderful phrase which I have used as the title for this post. “The phony intimacy of the global village.” Perhaps this phrase shows its age: “the global village”, was a product of the 1960s US. Invented by possibly the first guru of the 1960s generation, Marshall McLuhan, he created this term, and popularized it in his books "The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man" and "Understanding Media". McLuhan described how the globe has been contracted into a village by electric technology and the instantaneous movement of information from every quarter to every point at the same time. In bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion, electric speed heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree.

T years before the invention of the Internet, Marshall McLuhan had already presupposed its existence and impact and had described it as an "extension of consciousness" in "The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man".: "The next medium, whatever it is - it may be the extension of consciousness - will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind."

It was media which created the global village. First, television made information available across the globe; satellite television made this simultaneous and immediate. It also helped create common aspirations, desires, consumptions, and finally common cultures. This created the pathway for global brands. Examples are too numerous to quote. In any case, this phenomenon too obvious to need explanation and examples.

With the arrival of the Internet, a new dynamic entered the equation. Internet is not the preserve of the media empires; it is real democracy at work – for the people, of the people, by the people. (check out the actual quotation) While huge corporations 'own' significant platforms funded by advertising revenues, without you and I providing 'content', these platforms are worth nothing.

Why 'real' democracy? Consider this. Two people, sitting in a car in Egypt, launched the Arab Spring in Egypt. The Egyptian regime fell. The fall of Gaddafi has been similarly fueled by Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc. The regimes in other Arab countries are under threat of popular revolt. Right here in India, the tsunami of popular support from young India behind Anna Hazare and his cause has been driven largely by digital platforms, and for free, rather than by traditional media, like television.

Two such platforms – Facebook and Twitter – have created this truly global village exactly as McLuhan had imagined; they are indeed the "extensions of consciousness" that McLuhan had described. Which is possibly the reason why so many people spend so much of their time on these. The world is now divided into four parts:

• Those of us who are on one or both of these
• Those of us who are not too good at using these platforms, but would rather die than acknowledge that we are not on either or these platforms
• And, of course, there are a few of us who, being contrarians, take pride in staying away from one or both of these and saying so aloud

So, now here we are – with our very own presences in the Internet space, connected with lots and lots of people through FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other such platforms. The last-named is possibly the most functional of all. When I need to find people with specific knowledge and skills for a specific job, this is one of the best ways to find them.

But FB and Twitter? I discovered the other day that I have more than six hundred friends on Facebook. Six hundred! Friends!! Somewhat astonished, I went through the list of my six hundred plus 'friends', and here's what I found:

• there is one distinct set of people who are students whom I had taught, and we stay in touch sporadically. But whenever we do get in touch, there is genuine affection and respect
• there is another set of people whom I had added on as friends some years ago, but with whom there hasn't been any exchange for many many moons. In some of these cases, I have had to scratch my head to recall who they are and why did I add them to my friends list. No doubt they are also assiduously scratching their heads at the same time for the same reason
  
• a third group are really friends going back many years – surely I don't need FB for them. We speak to each other on the phone pretty frequently, at least once a fortnight anyway, even if we are separated by the seven seas
• another group comprises old friends, lost years ago, but found – serendipity! - through FB. That's really great – a lot of the old affection still remains in many of these cases
• a fifth group are alumni from my alma mater – and on hindsight, this is also really great, because FB has helped build bridges across batches, geographies, disciplines, walks of life, etc and built a strong bond across two or three generations

This led me to ponder the phrase “phony intimacy”. If I did a quick count of my FB friends on the criterion of 'intimacy' (dictionary meaning: "close or warm friendship or understanding; personal relationship" as per Collins English Dictionary"), maybe 40% of the list would survive. Would I miss the balance 60? Probably not. Would this balance 60% of my 'friends' on FB miss me? Most probably not either. If I contacted this 60% tomorrow, I guess most of them scratch their heads to figure out who I am and why have I suddenly lurched out of the woodwork, and what do I want out of them.

And that's where the 'phony' part kicks in. And that's why FB and Twitter and other such platforms are such great marketing opportunities. My new book is ready for launch, so I need to drum up awareness for the product. So I go out and blitz all my friends in FB and Twitter and other such platforms about the book, how great it is, etc – I don't need to bother about intimacy at all, as long as each 'friend' is a prospective buyer of my book. I have switched from an 'intimate' person mode to a marketer mode. Remember this from the McLuhan quote earlier: "tailored data of a saleable kind?" That's my book - the tailored data of a saleable kind.

All this may sound cynical, and of course, I have exaggerated in some parts in order to make my point. It may be worthwhile for someone to research this area in some detail. For now, I would love to get some reactions from the readers of this blog.