One of the most spectacular aspects of European expansion during modern times has been the growth of production and trade; the rapid increase in “foreign” investment; and governmental efforts to tie together geographically and ethnically remote places and peoples into neat bundles tagged Spanish Empire, British Empire, French Empire, Russian Empire.  Nineteenth and early twentieth century history centered around such international experiments and included inter-state build-ups like the European Common Market and the Organization of American States.

War losses and emergency spending incident to warfare led to large scale financial assistance from one government to another.  Such transactions are not confined to recent times, but during the war years from 1914 to 1945 they reached fantastic proportions.  The United States foreign aid program alone, following the war of 1939-45, involved grants and loans of $125,060 million dollars from July 1, 1945 to December 31, 1970 (Statistical Abstract 1971 p. 958).  Similar grants and loans were made by other countries to their allies and associates.  These examples illustrate the build-up of an extensive international relationship that has been an integral aspect of the 1750-1970 world revolution.

Throughout this experience two parallel forces have been at work.  One was the effort to establish a stable, renewable and self-renewing social environment.  The other was the effort to adapt and remake man (human nature) to fit into the rapidly changing social environment and to expand and deepen relations with nature.

Sociology, the science and art of staying together in more or less permanent social groups, thus becomes the theory and practice of association.  Politics and economics are specialized aspects of association.  Political relations, economic relations and other aspects of association make up the overall field of the human community or human society.

Groups of human beings are brought together and held together by various means, among which communication is outstanding.  At every level, from the local to the general or universal, and in every aspect of politics, economics and other forms of association, human beings communicate.

One function of planetary association involves the establishment and maintenance of a network of planetary communication.  Locally, nationally, regionally, and internationally the channels or means of communication have been extensively developed.

Devices designed to reproduce and elaborate oral and written communication blanket the planet so extensively that the individual and family privacy enjoyed by human beings before the middle of the last century has literally ceased to exist.  In its place is a communications network that operates twenty-four hours in the day and seven days in the week.  By a move of the hand and a flick of a switch everybody can be in touch with anybody and anybody with everybody almost everywhere.