Whose Global Village?: Rethinking How Technology Shapes Our World

In the digital age, technology has shrunk the physical world into a “global village,” where people seem to be connected as an online community. Yet social media and other digital technology tools, assumed often as open and accessible to all, are in reality commercial entities which often reinforce the inequalities of globalization, rarely reflecting the perspectives of those at the bottom of the digital divide.

This book asks its readers to reconsider “whose global village” is being shaped with the digital technology revolution today. Sharing stories of collaboration with Native Americans in California and New Mexico, revolutionaries in Egypt, communities in rural India, and others across the world, it urges us to reimagine what digital devices or social media platforms may look like when considered from the perspective of diverse cultures rather than corporate elites or Western consumers. Such collaborations can enable a people-first approach toward designing and working with new technology worldwide.