When I was in high school, in the 80s, I was part of a group that hacked into corporate voicemail systems so that we young hackers could communicate. Voicemail was pretty obscure then. You could find me, around lunchtime, at the payphone on campus, picking up and leaving messages. (Note for the young, look up "payphone" if you need to).
Around the same time, and for years after that, I also dialed-in to BBSs and made many good friends and had great conversations.
This was the 80s version of "connected" from a technology standpoint.
In the 90s and early 00s, the Internet was ramping up in terms of usage and growing beyond the tech corporations and universities. Even more connectivity.
Today, though? Everyone's online. Everyone has a smart phone with always-connected applications. And in the past decade or so, there's been a significant change that everyone takes for granted today but I rarely see called out: everyone has their connectivity on them at all times and pulls it out and uses it in all but the most rare social situations.
You see people on their phone all the time when, a decade ago, they may have had a newspaper, or a book, or would have just been sitting there taking in the passing landscape. Today, everyone defaults to "jacking in" when there's nothing else to do.
This, right now, is via hand-held devices. This will also change in the next few years, as wearables find an ergonomic niche that works. Things like Google Glass showed a hint of what's to come.
Within five years, everyone will remain connected, but you won't be able to tell.
How society will adapt remains to be seen. It's something I've been thinking about. I have some ideas. Some potentially even start-up-worthy.