Life in a Global Village

The view is well established that the ‘earth shrinking’ consequences of developments in transport and communications represent progress. This view is disputed here, not primarily on the grounds that increasing mobility is closely associated with increasing physical pollution, but on the grounds that, by increasing the scale of society, it is alienating. Some mobility growth rates are charted; the paradox that these growth rates are associated with a widening gulf in communications is examined. The growth in the scale and complexity of society's problems produces a growing dependence on esoteric techniques of control. The growth of the technology of control abets the growth of more complexity and yet more techniques for controlling it. The result is a progressive widening of the gulf that separates the controllers from the controlled.