The satellite medium, McLuhan states, encloses the Earth in a man-made environment, which “ends ‘Nature’ and turns the globe into a repertory theater to be programmed.”[4] All previous environments (book, newspaper, radio, etc.) and their artifacts are retrieved under these conditions (“past times are pastimes”). McLuhan thereby meshes this into the term global theater. It serves as an update to his older concept of the global village, which, in its own definitions, can be said to be subsumed into the overall condition described by that of the global theater.

“With satellite and electronic antennae as probes, the planet ceases in a way to be the human environment and becomes a satellite itself—a probe into space, creating new space and environments for the planet. If the planet itself has thus become the content of a new space created by its satellites, and its electronic extensions, if the planet has become the content and not the environment, then we can confidently expect to see the next few decades devoted to turning the planet into an art form.”