"What really struck me, though, was knowing that the lines didn't represent coasts or rivers or political borders, but real human relationships."

i have a hard time accepting the adjective 'real.'

still, in many ways we are closer to a 'world soul' insofar as people are baring more and more of themselves on the internet, and even in the case of 'catfish,' assuming personae either invented or borrowed (i'd even go as far as to include identity theft as symptomatic of this).

however one feels about facebook, twitter, the internet in general or the discovery of the mono lake bacterium, it's hard to ignore science fiction as 'the writing on the wall' for our generation.

*here is the link to butler's map — http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-119…