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When Marshall McLuhan, the celebrated Canadian media and communication theorist and "high guru" of media culture, first coined the phrase "global village" in 1964, no one could have predicted the level of information-dependency of our planet today. The mechanical age has been left behind and has given way to a postmodern electronic age. We spend an incredible amount of time every day using media, which in itself is a sign of their ubiquity. They represent a huge industry, and are all-powerful for the very reason that they have such a profound effect on us. They shape our ideas, behaviour and what we experience as reality and, due to the computerization of even remote geographic regions of the world, they guarantee that individuals are linked across languages and cultural borders.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-476-00406-2_23

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