And it's still a huge thing that shifted with the Internet too.

Prior to it, yes, there was international phone lines, but those were still expensive enough you might ignore them.

Before then, I'd say around start of the 90's in Europe, you did not represent yourself being in sync with someone, anyone abroad (but perhaps that started to become conceivable for people who could afford frequent international calls or travel).

And that conditioned how you perceived your own time, the time of others, the events here and over there, and the effort you took into communicating long distance, through letters.