- global (adj.)
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- 1670s, "spherical," from globe + -al (1). Meaning "worldwide, universal, pertaining to the whole globe of the earth" is from 1892, from a sense development in French. Global village first attested 1960, popularized, if not coined, by Canadian educator Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980).
Postliterate man's electronic media contract the world to a village or tribe where everything happens to everyone at the same time: everyone knows about, and therefore participates in, everything that is happening the minute it happens. Television gives this quality of simultaneity to events in the global village. [Carpenter & McLuhan, "Explorations in Communication," 1960]