Interesting topic and I agree with the OP and other posters as well. Mostly it comes from writing and how all the trilogies have been written in different eras. In the 70s and 80s if you left your hometown without a map you really were lost, and the world was a big place just behind a corner. Now when you have Google Maps, GPS and you can track anyone around the world, this place has gotten a lot smaller. And it shows as the writers are living in this world, everything is a click away so that is how they also write, unintentionally.
This is a really good point which I’ve never considered.