Culture
The Lingering Power of Geography Over How We Communicate
Even in an era of cheap, digital communication, most of us are still talking to our neighbors.
Modern communications technology was supposed to obliterate space, enabling us to encounter and talk to each other far beyond the boundaries of the backyard fence or the neighborhood pub. Eliminate the barriers and costs of communicating across longer distances – as cell phones and the Internet have – and, the theory went, our social circles would no longer have to be bound by geography.
Top image shows Belgium and Portugal.