Article:

McLuhans global village und Enzensbergers Netzestadt – Untersuchung und Vergleich der Metaphern

Due to the rapid development in the field of media in the recent decades and because of the resulting global networking, many metaphors have been and are still created which describe these contexts. This article contrasts two of these metaphors, namely Marshall McLuhan’s famous global village and Hans Magnus Enzenberger’s Netzestadt. First, both metaphors will be investigated separately and after that they will be compared. It will be worked out in which publications and in which contexts the metaphors are used in each case, to which they relate and how they are connotated. It turns out that – although both metaphors have been coined in the context of media and the linguistic material is similar – there are differences alone because of the temporal distance of nearly 40 years which is between the two metaphor creations: Because of the time, behind McLuhan’s metaphor is still an electronic net which has changed into a digital at Enzensberger.