h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm researching the history of the Staffordshire Potteries, and I can only say that the verbatim accounts I have been reading of life in the mid 1800's are quite astounding. Poverty, oppression, illness, workhouses - all the terrible stuff.

Now we can have things (goods, food, housing, services) that would have been unbelievable to those generations of our ancestors. But are we happier?

My belief is that we are now becoming isolated units in a place teeming with unknown people. Our families are not so often close knit, and close by. We live in streets where we hardly recognise our neighbours, never mind have a community that once existed in these self same places.

Communications? Well, this is a miracle indeed - I am in contact with friends all over the world. If I had lived to adulthood in the 1800s, I would have likely only been able to communicate with my friends and neighbours, so a world view would have been completely denied to me.