Despite the Internet and its incalculable potential for spreading knowledge, unawareness is rampant.
A Harris International Pool showed that, in February 2005, 64 per cent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction prior to the United States-led war in Iraq that removed him from power. In addition, 46 per cent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein had links with Al Qaeda and was involved in the 11 September 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers.
However, in a true global village, everyone would know that Iraq did not possess nuclear weapons and everyone would know that, in religious, ideological and political terms, Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden were as far apart and more violently so than the Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland. In a genuine global village, it would be common knowledge that, according to the World Food Program, there has been enough food to sustain the entire planets nutritional needs since the 1960s. With this information and the well being of the community in mind, villagers would take prompt action to eliminate starvation and malnutrition, which kills thousands daily in areas of the world where no ones heard of a dial-up connection.
This is neither an idealist stance nor a naively utopian vision of the present or future. It is simply taking the word village and its connotations and applying those meanings to a popular perception in an attempt to prove its reality or render it invalid. Indeed, village clearly fails the test, even more so than global .
A map of the global Internet population, just like conventional world charts, is marked by stringent boundaries and will continue to be so divided.
