Jour431 CH2 modern and postmodern

This chapter in the our class text went on to discuss how we as a society have progressed to the state we are currently at. In the beginning we had only vocal dialog, then a progression to the written form, which for a long time was the standard and now to electronic media which can be broadcast to any place on earth or any place in space.
In the modern period Marx's stated that modernity is in a constant state of flux. In this period there was still a great deal of face-to-face contact, which as we progress past that to this "post modern" era we see more commerce and interaction done through new forms of media. When dealing with commerce we as a society went from being a regional and agrarian where goods only traveled a short distance to a world economy where good produced in Brazil may be sold to people in India or in other places on the open markets.

A question I took from this reading, after reading it is are we better off?

In the beginning historical accounts were told from one generation to another and there was a greater interaction between its members. In today's society we do so much more communication through the internet and other means so even though we are communicating to more people in different cultures and areas of the world are we making any great strides seeing as its not in person or on a more personnel level?
In the conclusion it discusses that every new form of media come with some form optimistic or pessimistic feeling/views. I started thinking, say we as a society decided no to embrace cell phones and kept doing things the way they were before their advent where would we be now?