Are more close-ups inevitable?

The other day someone asked me and some of my colleagues if the availability of shows on mobile devices is changing the way shows are shot. I answered not yet but perhaps someday yes.

This morning I watched a movie from the late 1940s. In scenes where characters were positioned far apart, the director seldom cut to closeups.

I wondered if in the 1940s and 1950s, film directors had more experience working on stage than on sets, and if that influenced what shots were set up to tell the story.

Did subsequent generations, having grown up watching television, favor more close shots?

And what will TV and movies look like when the generation that grew up on Nintendo DS and Apple Touch starts calling the shots?

update

My friend BB writes:

I’ll bet that had to do more with the limitations of those massive cameras they were using in the 40s/50s for TV. Admittedly, I don’t know a ton about this, but I guess D.W. Griffith is credited 30 years prior to that, with creating a cinema grammar when everyone else was basically doing the equivalent of filming staged plays.