[mrweasel]

> Did people feel the same way when the railroad and other forms of rapid transport showed up?

To some extend yes. When I was a kid, we'd rarely go to the only major city in our part of the country. Maybe two times a year. Now I live in that area, but I can easily go visit my parents for dinner, just because someone decided that a motorway was a great idea. It cut somewhere like 40 minutes to an hour of the drive.

It still boggles my mind that 30 years ago we considered it a day trip, but with a shorter distance, faster speeds, in a better car, it's just a quick drive, allowing my daughter to see her grandparents way more often than I saw mine.

[kernoble]

Point being: increased speed, and therefore frequency, of communication/interaction changes the nature of our relationships.

So the change in the "underlying" doesn't have to be 10x to have a 10x effect on the relationships.