Le terme <<village global>> a été inventé par Marshall McLuhan dans les années 60. C'est un concept maintenant aussi universel que les technologies globales qui le concrétisent.

``Our speed-up today is not a slow explosion outward from center to margins but an instant implosion and an interfusion of space and functions. Our specialist and fragmented civilization of center-margin structure is suddenly experiencing an instantaneous reassembling of all its mechanized bits into organic whole. This is the new world of the global village.'' -- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, 1964