It felt a lot smaller, actually. There's was no cheap way to effectively communicate with anyone far enough away to have a very different experience. People all watched the same handful of TV channels. The only way to learn about other countries or even cities was to go there, or read a published, edited book about it.

We just loaded up our covered wagons and prayed for good weather.

It was cheaper to drive 50 miles to another town to visit with relatives in person than pay for long distance charges for a phone call.

At least in Germany the autobahn was (and still is) lined with emergency phones. And in the city it was easy to find a phone booth. So it wasn't as daunting as you might think.

And on the plus side there were fewer cars which meant you could drive faster. So that 1 hour drive actually got you further than today.

But there were also a lot more insects, so you had to find some time to clean your car.

I can imagine even an hour car ride would have seemed much more daunting

Not at all. I started driving at the end of the 1980s. My grandfather taught me. He also taught me how do the basic car maintenance, like changing a tire and checking/refilling the fluids. In my trunk was always the spare tire+jack, a bottle of oil, a bottle of water, a toolkit, and a small empty gas can. I never needed them except the spare tire once. I never worried about getting roadside assistance.

Me and the girl I was dating at the time used to just pick a direction and drive for an hour to see what we'd find. It was one of the best ways to get some privacy when you both live with your parents!

It was massive with only paper maps and no mobile phones. If you needed help, you had to ask or get somewhere that had a phone.

If you wanted to call someone, both people needed to be physically near a phone.

And we used to walk to school with our siblings on our backs, in the snow, uphill both ways.

Now get offa my lawn!

For poor people the world seems big. For rich people the world seems smaller.

Poor people who can't even afford a car or the gas, stay in one spot for much of their lives.

Rich people can get on a plane or even a private jet and go anywhere, and pay to stay in a hotel for two months, or rent a house, then go somewhere else. Or fly to Paris for a one-night stay.

Most people are somewhere in between, of course.

Access to affordable fast travel is what makes the world feel small. This has been true since we started riding on horseback, I assume.

Maybe for younger people, those who barely remember a time before smartphones, being able to text someone anywhere in the world with a computer that lives in their pocket makes the world seem smaller, but that's only if they're used to "their world" being virtual to begin with. If you text your mom in the kitchen about dinner the same way you text your grandma on the other side of the country, I suppose they both feel "close".

You implied that without pocket-access to emergency services, travel would seem more daunting. I don't think that was the case at all, that was not a factor in planning a trip, because there was no alternative. No one was afraid to leave the house without a phone because there were no pocket phones. Also, because no one had phones, people would stop to help if your car ran out of gas, or broke down, unlike today.

I dunno, the only real difference I can think of was trip planning. Calling for a tow wasn't necessarily going to be an every trip thing anyway, and unless you were going to be away from even small population centers, it wasn't that hard to manage for an able bodied person.

So the real barrier to just driving to the beach (as an example) was in knowing what turns to take more than anything else.

But the truth is that pre-gps, most people that were driving significant distances, or to unfamiliar places locally, carried maps. I used to do home health, and if the client didn't give directions, you sat down with a map, found where they lived, and planned the route.

It was definitely more stressful going to an unfamiliar place for sure though. Gps with voice direction reduces the need to take your eyes away from driving to look for street signs. Doesn't eliminate it, but the reduction compared to navigating a town you've never been in is massive.

I can't say that those annoyances made the world feel smaller or larger though. Driving from my area up to somewhere like Pittsburgh or Baltimore was a perfectly reasonable trip to make in a single day of driving.