A lot of people seem to comment about how the internet seems to be increasing the insularity of societies. I don't really think that's the case. I think what happens is that the internet makes visible (to outsiders) the preexisting insularity of societies. Prior to the internet, the only window we had on other societies and social groups was whatever they made public via the mass-media. But now, we can "look inside" each society's internal "conversations," and this, inevitably, reveals their fundamental insularity vis-a-vis other social groups and societies. This is especially true across linguistic boundaries.
I've commented before about how South Korea somehow manages to be one of the most internet-connected societies on earth yet also manages to remain alarmingly xenophobic and uninterested in the "world outside." But that's an example where I myself have fallen into this trap of imagining the internet would somehow broaden minds and level differences. It doesn't do that, especially across language-barriers. Instead, it only "makes visible" preexisting differences. It puts us all inside Foucault's panopticon, but it doesn't really change how we act as social and fundamentally "tribal" beings.