When "time and space" is searched in Google Images, the first result is a wiggling blue sun. The second is a diagram exploring Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Half a century before Einstein shrank theoretical time and space, Edward Muybridge had figured out a way to freeze clear instants in time on film. But not only did he freeze time, sequential photographs taken not a second apart were the beginnings of the motion picture, which would allow people to step out of their own lives for a couple of hours in the dark and sit in on the lives of characters on screen. Isn't it fitting that Muybridge began his innovative work in California? More than freezing time was the era's new abilities to physically overcome vast distances, such as the width of the United States, with the steam engine locomotive and advances in steel production. With the ability to cross such a space in a few days, space seems to disappear and be crossed instantaneously. At least, at thirty five miles per hour, people were moving faster than any stagecoach could move, though hardly moving at all compared to the airplane, which was still twenty years away from a successful flight. And before the cell phone, or the land line, what allowed instant person-to-person connection was the telegraph, if the desired person had access to a telegraph.
As time passes, people are constantly inventing new ways to break down any barrier that prevents instant gratification. Planes are faster. The Internet can be carried around in a PDA or phone. And those phones can make a call from almost anywhere, the exceptions being outside of civilization or when enclosed by concrete. Possibly in the coming centuries these heights of technology will be seen as slow and inefficient means of connecting two points, like those of the past are today.

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/april18/aps-041807.html