The grandparent comment makes a nice point. Humans imbue their lived environment with meaning and functionality. Our lived environment now includes a whole dif

The grandparent comment makes a nice point. Humans imbue their lived environment with meaning and functionality. Our lived environment now includes a whole different element, that of being ever connected in the present to a global information network. This means that there is a real loss, to society, of the utility of previously physical common spaces. People derived meaning and value there, and it has gone away. Losing something meaningful and valuable is sad. The fact that it happens a lot doesn’t make it less so. Obviously, the WWW offers all sorts of opportunities to create meaning and value, perhaps more. But something fundamental has changed, in that we now engage in important social activities through telecommunications and mediated is experiences. This is devaluing sone types of social infrastructure that previously provided these functions. I think we have crossed a “social singularity,” from which there is no going back. Similar to other technologies that changed human societies profoundly, and permanently. The other I was trying to recall what it felt like to “not have the internet,” and I couldn’t get the feeling back, even though I lived half my life like that.