The internet has capitalized on the sad fact that we as a society have forgotten what it's like to interact with each other. There is no place to do it. We peer at each other through tinted glass or stare at tail-lights. This is our only interaction.
Ideas die without fresh air.
Yet we do more than ever. Plazas in city centers were converted to parking lots. And the streets became mere functional swaths of ever-widening asphalt surrendered to unceasing swarms of speeding vehicles. The Cold War wasn't just fought between the US and the USSR, it was fought here at home. Now people are trying to reconnect and reach out to each other via email and chat rooms, but it doesn't fill the void.