One thing I've noticed is the missing "friendly strangers" in my life -- the people you recognize by being visible in your community at all of the places people regularly frequent (or used to at least). Seeing the same people again and even just recognizing they are there reinforces a sense of place for me.
I moved out of the big city to a smaller one and was instantly fascinated by people who would say, "Hi," as I passed by. At first it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. They would even stop and ask how I was doing and make a banal, funny comment about the weather. The culture of the city I just came from was different. People would assume you wanted something if you opened your mouth or looked at anything but the ground a few meters in front of you. For more than a decade I lived in a place where people weren't nice to you unless they were selling something.
I even tried Facebook for a while because my friends had all stopped using the phone. That was a disaster. You would think that going to an "event," with all of your "friends," would be great. But people only showed up with their cliques and there was nothing very friendly about it. I stopped using Facebook and deleted my profile. I stopped going to events where nobody would talk to me and ended up seeing precisely the same people I would hang out with anyway so no loss there. I think the "social network," thing is some kind of inside joke I don't understand.
I hope to get to know my neighbors better. I shovel the snow the for lady on the corner. She lives alone with her dog. Her husband suffers from dementia and lives in a home. The neighbors one door up are a large family that mostly keeps to themselves. The grandmother is the only one who will acknowledge my existence when I say, "Hi," while I'm out in the garden or when we bump into one another at the corner store. It's weird, I think, to feel like I'm living in a fish bowl and that my community is just a place where we all keep our stuff and sleep.
It must be this pervasive culture of convenience and luxury that allows us to be entertained and socialized without having to interact with anyone else. Who knows what your neighbors are like and who needs them? Maybe that is a better quality of life. I just think it's a little strange... and when hard times do come I wonder if we'll all be able to rely on one another to get through it.