For most of history, relationships were based mainly on physical location. Your community was, almost by definition, the people within walking distance.
Before networks, relationships developed through families, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and local organizations. People were more likely to know their physical neighbors, and businesses reached nearby customers through local newspaper ads.
Now people form communities with others anywhere in the world — around a hobby, a profession, a rare disease, a very specific joke — although they may interact less with the people on their own street.
Networks decoupled belonging from proximity. The gain is real: no one with an unusual interest or an unusual condition has to be alone with it anymore. The cost is real too: you can know someone nine time zones away better than the person next door. Both things are true at once, which is what makes this one hard to score as progress or loss.
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