How close are we to a society without everyday human interaction?

Answer 1

I'd say some of us were closer to that in the late 1990s to early 2000s, especially with the way the internet-driven New Economy encouraged people to work from home and to automate and/or do as much online as possible.

Of course, *now* the New Economy is trashed completely, thanks to Big Oil, Big Banking, on and on...

And really? I think the bigger problem is more subtle than what most people think it is. It isn't that human interaction doesn't take place these days. *Lots* of people have been in my face this month over housing hassles, hassles in getting social services restored, and so on. And just today...I *wasted* a trip mostly out of town to the Driver Services Building, a.k.a. the DMV, to try to get my ID renewed, only to discover that this *State Agency* is too good to accept *U.S. Currency*, it now has to be checks or money orders. O_O

How *that* works, in terms of legal standing and legitimacy, I have *no* Idea. Read the Legal Tender bit on *any* paper currency and you'll see my point. -_-

But I digress. Point is, I took a long unpleasant trip today....that was wasted and I had to go back home, to a neighbor-friend I sort of know, and had to borrow the buck extra to *get* the damned money order. And now I'm going to have to get up *early* in the morning tomorrow to get this *done* when it should have been done today....

And a *LOT* of my life is like that. I humbly suspect it's like this for other people too, yes, even those more fortunate than myself.

It isn't *quantity* of human contact. We still get plenty of "contact", in the sense of "contact sport", in the sense of people *being in our faces* and of "unnecessary roughness" and of having *tons* of restrictive new rules and near-fascist police forces around to *enforce* these arbitrary whims of political fancy (really, the DMV in my town is not a big building, and there were 3 security officers there inside of it, and a fourth outside it. Huh?).

It isn't the quantity. It's the *Quality*. Simply put, people can't be bothered to be halfway sociable to each other, or to even show that they have any manners. On the bus ride home...three school kids got on the bus. Two of them had expired school passes, so the driver had words with them, which is fine, but....

why didn't the kids sit down? Why didn't they even *move* and let other people get on and off the bus? I was *this >< Close* to just snapping on all three of them and telling them *very* loudly "MOVE, NOW!! WHAT, ARE YOU RETARDED??" But they were kids, and someone has to be the grown-up around here--that fell on me.

It's the quality of human interaction....people aren't nice to each other, they hardly ever show each other any kindness, and most younger folks just *refuse* to learn how to act around human beings.

I'd submit that we are living in a society without everyday *Positive* human interaction for sure. -_- Edit #2: Thanks to the Thumbs-Down Troll for proving my point here. People have no class these days!

I hope this helps, thanks for your time. -_-

Answer 2

A cluster of people without empathy or ability to grasp the emotions and sensations of others is a cluster of psychopaths; they don't build a society they destroy it. Think about it, this is why America today has the highest incarceration level in the world - vast numbers of unemployed or unemployable young men, many of which are immigrants, with either an inborn or inculcated inability for empathy or reciprocal socialization.
Modern society has no use for these people, brute labor is no longer needed because it's been replaced by machines. And in fact they're not just redundant but act like acid on a stable society and just like using acid in a laboratory a little bit goes a long way; hence, the only 'moral' solution is to use what they naturally do, all they can do - antisocial acts - as a pretext to lock them away for long periods of time. These males are all action and no thought, all impulse without any mitigation or forward planning involved; this is a definition of the animal mindset of instinct over intellect. Animals should be treated like animals and blaming them for being what they are is as deluded as expecting them to be reformed by judicial reprimand!

It's important to have our human interaction but since were becoming so desensitized today why should we fight when it might be for the inevitable and overall, the end?

Answer 3

If people go with the wind, and accept whatever presented to them, it'll happen soon or it is upon us already.
As Bradley mentioned the quality of the interaction matters too. Some interactions we have today are not human.

A very good and thought-provoking question. Thanx.

Answer 4

Very close everything is done by computer now, and soon everything will be like that and there won't be the need for human interaction. I had a cat scan done today and they said I didn't have to come get my films they'll send my "films" to my doctor's e-mail. How crazy is that?

Answer 5

Depends on the social class. Middle class people don't tend to go in for substitute lives on the net or by cell phone so much as poor and well-to-do. Lower incomes spend all their time yapping on cells. Upper classes sit 10 hours a day at their super-computer.

Answer 6

REAAAAAAAAAALY far away.... remember that a doctor can't operate virtually on a person, a group of factory workers can't virtually build a car, and a family can't virtually have a home cooked meal

Answer 7

It will never happen.... the need for friendship is an innate biological and human phenemenon that external forces can only mediate but not wipe away.

Answer 8

Closer than we think. With the days of cell phones, tivo, grocery delivery... and such.. I think we could achieve total seclusion with in 10 years..

Answer 9

It's never going to happen, people like to get together to hang out

Answer 10

oh man! my mom says that all the time, she says we'll all be on our computers only ... what's that stupid movie with Sandra Bullock, where they don't have real sex, it's just done with virtual reality goggles -- not the same, but it made me think of that ...