In “Time Enough at Last,” one of the most famous episodes of The Twilight Zone, a bespectacled bookworm named Henry Bemis is berated by his boss for reading on the job, and criticized by his wife for being more interested in books than people. One day, Henry accidentally survives a nuclear war that kills everyone else. He's delighted to realize that he'll finally be able to read with nobody bothering him. Then, in a classic Twilight Zone twist, he drops his glasses, shattering the lenses. Henry has all the books and all the time he ever wanted, but is too blind to enjoy it.
For introverts, the last few years have felt a bit like that Twilight Zone episode. In March of 2020, the idea of clearing our calendar for “two weeks to flatten the curve” felt, at least to my family, like a welcome respite from our over-committed schedules. But as those two weeks stretched into months (and, for some people, years) of unnatural isolation, it became clear that - like Henry Bemis - even the most agoraphobic of us should be careful what we wished for.
As all of us collectively emerge from our multi-year fugue state, I've noticed a bit of a Rip Van Winkle effect. Things seem ... different. After (thankfully) not needing to visit a medical center in a few years, I went to one, only to find that the reception desk was now a sleek, electronic kiosk. Progress, I suppose, but when I had a question, I had to ask the security guard, because he was the only human employee in the lobby.
New York City recently announced that they will be deploying real-life RoboCops (although they look more like Daleks than OmniCorp products), and companies such as Boston Dynamics have been working on guard-bots for years. This means that, quite soon, the one human I saw on duty might be replaced by a machine. Even as a person who doesn't particularly enjoy talking to strangers, I find this unsettling.
Humans are pack animals, not unlike lions, wolves, or hyenas. When a pack animal is isolated, it experiences mental and emotional distress; it becomes more vulnerable to threats; and it often develops abnormal behaviors, such as excessive aggression or timidity. While our increasing reliance on technology may initially provide some relief to people who struggle with social anxiety, it seems that, as with the COVID mitigation measures, the harm outweighs the benefits.
Our brains are roughly three hundred thousand years old. A stone-age brain interacting with a computer - even if there's another human at the other end of it - feels alone. As AI and AI-adjacent tools like chatbots become more prevalent, that sense of isolation increases. It's no coincidence that research finds that levels of social connectedness have plummeted and rates of depression and anxiety have skyrocketed over the course of the Information Revolution. The more our normal human interactions are replaced by unnatural, tech-mediated ones, the more our brains perceive that we are separated from the pack we rely on to survive.
We crave connection with others, even in situations as trivial as buying something from a store, but even more than that, we crave reality. The modern concepts of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Meta Reality have something important in common: they're not reality at all. Or, more precisely, they're not the reality they appear to be. The hardware and software are real, but the mirages they project are as insubstantial and unhelpful as the cooling oasis conjured by the heatwaves of a parched desert.
Our society is on a troubling trajectory. Millions of people are engaging primarily with electronic devices rather than other human beings, and are more absorbed in virtual worlds than the real one. This is not a prescription for health and wellbeing. It doesn't matter how advanced you think you are, your brain is borrowed from a cave-dweller who believes that isolation from the tribe is a death sentence. Deep down, even if you don't like people, you need them.
It's easy to see the advantages of robots, computerized kiosks, and AI. People can be rude or unhelpful, and they often make mistakes. Why bother trying to explain your fast-food order to a moody teenager behind a counter when you can punch it in yourself on a touchscreen? Why waste time trying on shoes in a store when you can order three pairs from an online shop, and return the ones you don't like? At each step, it feels as though we're making our lives easier and more frictionless. But are we really? It seems more likely that we’re on the verge of finding ourselves in the same position as Henry Bemis: with everything, but without anyone.