"All distances in time and space are shrinking. Man now reaches overnight, by plane, places which formerly took weeks and months of travel ... Man puts the lon

"All distances in time and space are shrinking. Man now reaches overnight, by plane, places which formerly took weeks and months of travel ... Man puts the longest distances behind him in the shortest time. He puts greatest distances behind himself and thus puts everything before himself at the shortest range... What is happening here when, as a result of the abolition of great distances, everything is equally far and equally near? What is this uniformity in which everything is neither far nor near--is, as it were, without distance? Everything gets lumped together into uniform distancelessness [sic]. How? Is not this merging of everything into the distancelesss [sic] more unearthly that everything bursting apart?" --Excerpts from The Thing, Martin Heidegger circa 1971