Globalization

I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where everything "over The Hill and across The Water" is distant, unknown, and foreign? That sense of the world as wide, mysterious, and wild is in large part where the sense of magic comes from as I read a book like this. Everything is a new discovery for Bilbo from the moment he leaves his front porch. I sometimes feel almost cheated by the connectedness of our technological world.