A shrinking or an ever expanding world...thanks to technology?

I had my family over for nearly four days and now they are gone. They went back home to the USA. Same time my daughter went away last night for seven months to Chicago to further her studies. Only my son is at home.
I met my brother and other relatives after nearly a decade if not more. He is into his late sixties, and the rest are just about that age. I don't know if I am going to see them again any time soon.
This makes me wonder if technology has made any positive impact on our lives or, on the contrary, it has thrown us far and wide and kept us so busy that we simply get to see each other only on few occasions in our life time -- if we are lucky. It is not shrinking the world but it is removing us from loved ones -- all in the name of progress.
I am not a progressive person. I want to sit across from a loved one instead of facing a screen or speaking into a mouth piece. Yes, more and more people are turning to tele-conferencing or texting since they cannot afford to travel and meet each other as often as they would like to. If this is the future of all our social existence in time to come, give me the good old world any time -- sans technology.