Taken together, telecommunications, satellites, computers and fibre-optics are halving the cost of processing, storing and transmitting information every 18 months. No, time has not ceased and space has not vanished - but life does seem to be moving rapidly that way. Today's fibre-optic counterparts carry no fewer than 10 million conversations. Only a few years before McLuhan wrote, when the first telephone cables were laid across the Atlantic in 1956, they carried 36 simultaneous conversations. CNN did not exist, nor did the internet, and the explosion of telephone communications was just beginning. He argued that electronic technology was shrinking the planet, that "Time has ceased and space has vanished". It is almost 40 years since Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase "global village" in his book The Gutenberg Galaxy. Prepared for delivery to the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Auswartige Politik Global Markets and the Global Village in the 21st Century: Are International Organizations Prepared for the Challenge? - Address by Stanley Fischer
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