McLuhan in his 1954 lecture, ‘Catholic Humanism and Modern Letters’:

The empires of Alexander and the Caesars were essentially built by paper routes. But today with instantaneous global communications the entire planet, is, for purposes of inter-communication, a village rather than a vast imperial network. 

“Inter-communication” was a favorite catch-phrase of Henry Wright, one of McLuhan’s mentors at the University of Manitoba — more than two decades before the ‘Catholic Humanism’ lecture.