Global village is a term, coined by Marshall McLuhan in his book The GutenbergGalaxy, describing the trend of electronic mass media collapsing space and time barriers in human communication to enable people to communicate on a global scale. In this sense, the globe has been turned into a village by the electronic mass media. Today, the global village is mostly used as a metaphor to describe the Internet and World Wide Web. The Internet globalizes communication by allowing users from around the world to connect with each other. Similarly, web-connected computers enable people to link their web sites together.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_village
World is a global village - 8 minute WMV video from CBC Archives.