The demise of the familiar, but not intimate, relationship?

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

Originally Posted by Dread Knot

I hope so. When I think of the internet future I always recall a sci-fi novella I stumbled across in 1974 as a kid. It was set in a world where everyone live in apartments underground and lived their lives vicariously through machine communication with others. Leaving your abode even to step into the hall out your door was considered a horror. So was physical communication or contact with others. It was originally written in 1909, but was remarkably prescient in many ways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops

Just food for thought.

For some reason that reminds me of Einstien's probable prediction "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots." With the way people are becoming more and more reliant on technology how many generations will it take before such a thing comes true, if it will even happen?

Almost as if to prove this point some family friends came down from Washington State to visit Disneyworld and my family a visit as well, one of them who is a pre-teen was glued to his iPhone for almost the entire trip and wasn't even remotely interested in anything other then the iPhone.