BEGAE-182 Study Notes — Block 1 Unit 2: The Globalization of Communication

These are free study notes by IGNOUNotes.in for BEGAE-182 Block 1 Unit 2 — The Globalization of Communication: A Global Village. This unit explains how technology shrank our world, who coined the term "global village," and how each major communication invention changed society. Full exam-ready notes with model answers below.

Imagine living 150 years ago — no electricity in most homes, no telephone, no radio, no television. News from another city took weeks to arrive by letter. Travelling was done by bullock cart or on foot. The world felt enormous.

Today, you can video call someone in New York from a village in Rajasthan. You can watch a cricket match live from Australia. You can get news from anywhere in the world within seconds. What changed everything? Communication technology.

The term "global village" was coined by Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan. He died on the last day of 1980 (December 31) and has been called "the most celebrated English teacher of the twentieth century." Although he was a professor of English literature, he became famous as a communications theorist and philosopher.

To understand how dramatically things have changed, the IGNOU textbook gives a remarkable true story from 1892.

Communication scholar Frederick Williams created a brilliant way to understand just how recent our modern communication tools really are. He imagined the entire 360 centuries (36,000 years) of human cultural history compressed into a single 24-hour day. This is called the 360-Century Day.

Here is what happens in that imaginary day — and when:

Fig 2.1 — The 360-Century Day: Human Communication History as 24 Hours (Frederick Williams, 1982 · Ref: BEGAE-182, Block 1, Unit 2, IGNOU)

Communication theorists have observed that every major change in communication technology causes a major change in society. This is one of the most important ideas in this unit.

One of the most interesting ideas in this unit is that SMS texting — which many adults see as a corruption of English — actually follows strategies used by the inventors of writing itself, thousands of years ago.

Early writing systems were limited by the materials available — writing on clay or stone was slow and expensive. So they kept messages short and economical, leaving out predictable letters. SMS does the same thing because of screen space and typing speed.

• The world is now a global village — a term coined by Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan — because of the instantaneous flow of information between any two points.
• McLuhan was a professor of English literature (not technology), died December 31, 1980, and wrote Understanding Media (1964).
• Technology has physically "shrunk" our world. A journey that took 21 days in 1892 (Tiruchi to Vijayawada by bullock cart) can now be done in a few hours.
• Frederick Williams mapped 360 centuries of human cultural history onto a single 24-hour day (the 360-Century Day). Writing appears at 8:40 PM, printing at 11:38 PM, the telegraph at 11:53 PM, and all modern technologies explode in the last 7 minutes.
• The telegraph (1855) was the first time a message could travel faster than the messenger — a historic turning point.
• Every major change in communication technology causes a major change in society. Printing created universal literacy and made distance education possible.
• When education was oral, memory was the technology for preserving knowledge. Sanskrit texts like the Amara Kosha were memorised entirely across generations.
• SMS and modern texting use the same strategies as ancient writing systems — leaving out vowels, rebus-style number/letter combinations — because both face the same constraint: making messages short and economical.
• Virtual and diasporic communities have emerged because of the internet — groups spread across the world but connected by shared language, culture, or interest.