in a future without touch?
I've been slowly reading Isaac Asimov's robot series, which I've been enjoying immensely. He has such an accurate grasp of human nature.
There is mention of a planet where the entire human population is only about 20,000. But then there's 5,000 robots for every human. Since robots do perfect mathematical calculations, the economy runs smoothly, so there isn't any war, since economic strife is what causes wars. People live for a few hundred years, since disease and such has been eliminated.
In this utopia, where there's plenty of space between individual humans, the rare need to touch is considered to be something filthy and grotesque. Even married couples live completely separate lives within their large homes. The "duty" to procreate is considered highly unpleasant, and children are raised by robots in separate regions away from their parents. In rare cases, a physician might need to examine an ailing person in the flesh, and that is also considered "icky". (Isaac Asimov is hardly the only science fiction writer to suggest such.)
There's plenty of communication going on, but it takes place via 3D video. The process is so sophisticated that two people can "go on a walk" together, by viewing each other as they each walk, while they are actually many miles away from each other.
While I'm a person who loves living alone, I absolutely would not want to live in an environment where face-to-face contact with another is not only rare, but highly unpleasant. It sometimes feels to me that things are already headed that way, considering that families can be in a living room together, but communicate via texting on their phones. The simple suggestion of going to lunch with another person often feels like a massively complex process with all sorts of "ifs, ands, or buts" in the way. I have a few clients that I've never met in person, and many more than I haven't seen for a decade or more. I sometimes wonder if the children currently being raised find the idea of meeting someone outside their family or classmates to be thoroughly terrifying. And icky.
And, of course, in such a future there could never be a Starsky and Hutch. Two guys who have a massive need to have physical contact with each other, whatever one's view on their sexuality. They would perish in a utopia where touching another is a disgusting idea. I find the idea of having never witnessed that kind of open love just... unfathomable.
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