We can travel from major air hub to major air hub at a substantial percentage of Mach 1. That's a long way from "unthinkable."

It was unthinkable by most people at the start of the Twentieth Century. That's the sense in which I meant it.

How much does it affect your life?

In many ways. I was born in one country, I lived for several years in another country, and now I live in yet another country. But I wasn't talking about my personal possibility for travel. I was thinking of businesses, and goods being transported around the world in a way that wasn't possible at the start of the Twentieth Century. Some of the food I eat, most of the clothes I wear and all of the products I use are not made locally, but they're made somewhere else entirely, and that's only because faster transportation has made this possible.

Americans, if we're going to be specific, have been wandering for 150 years... and are here because of wanderlust. We've been nomads since the Reformation. And hey - if you want to visit the Empty Quarter it's just as much of a bitch for you as it was for TE Lawrence once you break clear of Riyadh. You aren't going to, though, so it doesn't much matter.

What was that thing about unfounded assertions? I travel a lot, I live in a country that's not my native one, and I'm not American.

And you have superficial relationships with disparate people all over the globe but you have fewer superficial relationships with people in your neighborhood.

Once again, it's not about my own vantage point. I was referring to how other people (everyone) can communicate with anyone else. Before the era of mass communication, few people had a clue of what it meant to live in a different country or even a different city. Few people could imagine what it meant to live in a different social class, or to lead a different kind of life. Throughout the Twentieth Century governments have fallen, the rights of women and minorities have gained more prominence, and several other aspects of everyday life have been revolutionized in ways that have only been made possible by an increase in the possibilities of communication. This is analyzed brilliantly by the sociologist Joshua Meyrowitz in his book "No Sense of Place".

I don't know what "mentalities" you think you need to "catch up", but the last adaptation I made was "shit - a lot of the people who hire me are on Facebook, I better set up an account."

Here are a few examples of mentalities that need catching up:

- Religious beliefs and practices don't make any sense in light of the current scientific progress, but many people still think they do. Additionally, many people still believe that an ethical behavior can only stem from religious beliefs, but that's false, too. These beliefs in turn leads people to cause damage to other people (or to inhibit their freedom) in the name of religion or a "higher power". Of course the situation is not the same everywhere.

- Patriotism and excessive nationalism don't make sense either, and at the very least they need to be revisited. When many corners of the world are getting every day more alike, being "proud" of having been born in one place rather than another, and assuming certain "rights" because of that, is an unfounded prejudice that can only have negative results.

- The idea, that many have, that there is a nearly-perfect form of government and that form is a democratic republic is well-intentioned but naive. The best form of government hasn't been invented yet. And when it does get invented, it might be too late because technology (and society with it) will have changed again in the meantime. For millennia the world hasn't changed much, and there were just a handful of forms of government to choose from. Now none of them suits our society, but change in that department is much much slower than technological change, so we live in the present surrounded by institutions created by our great-grandfathers and run by our fathers and grandfathers.

The thing you're missing is that victory belongs to those who adapt. The world you live in is being dictated by people who have figured out how best to take advantage of the situation.

No, it's dictated by their parents and grandparents – by people who managed to adapt to the TV and the remote control, but not quite to the Internet. Until a few years ago, George W. Bush was one of the most important men in the world in terms of the power he held; would you say that his mentality is adapted to the realities of our present time? I don't think so.