Have we reached the decline of meaningful human interaction?

You’d hope meaningful interaction isn’t dying and it’s not yet time to worry about futuristic outcomes that seem to dominate TV/movie concepts recently, but there is cause to worry.

For example: while many companies aren’t even remotely there yet (ha) on embracing remote work (see how I made that funny with the “remote” parallel? I’m good.), many people do work from home or a coffee shop a few days per week. (I’ve seen it as high as 40% in some studies.) Wi-Fi is everywhere in the first world, so this is certainly a possible concept. That’s less meaningful interaction, because you’re emailing and Skype’ing with people, not doing the whole face to face thing.

Now let’s say you live in a suburban neighborhood, where fences are normative. That’s also less meaningful interaction, also that has less to do with tech and more to do with real estate development. But when you need toilet paper, f*ck the store. You’ll Amazon that. Less meaningful interaction with neighbors. You need food? Favor, Hello Fresh, Fresh Direct, etc.

It starts getting to the spot where you could probably string together 3–5 days straight of no meaningful interaction with the outside world, i.e. other human beings. You might be closer with Alexa (“Start the dryer”) then you are with some of your siblings.