  The Internet revolution has made long-distance communication dramatically
faster, easier, and cheaper than ever before. This, it has been argued, has
decreased the importance of geographic proximity in social interactions,
transforming our world into a global village with a borderless society. We
argue for the opposite: while technology has undoubtedly increased the overall
level of communication, this increase has been most pronounced for local social
ties. We show that the volume of electronic communications is inversely
proportional to geographic distance, following a Power Law. We directly study
the importance of physical proximity in social interactions by analyzing the
spatial dissemination of new baby names. Counter-intuitively, and in line with
the above argument, the importance of geographic proximity has dramatically
increased with the internet revolution.

Computers and Society;Physics and Society