The demise of human contact was illustrated in the infamous Jane Fonda movie "Barbarella." By that point in the future, you could kill someone through overstimulation, especially when they put you through the torture device called an "endorphin machine." They had to take a pill to simulate sex.

What does it all mean?

Actually, very little, in real terms. The rate of sociological change is in fact very slow and people today are very much motivated by the same things that motivated them in Shakespeare's time. It's the reason so many stories are timeless and being told today sometimes thousands of years later.

So relax, Durbs. Humans will still be loving, hating and telling stores in 2050.

BTW. Most students who leave university and college today are not much good at anything: especially those "spcialising" in "hi-tech" areas like software engineering. The quality keeps getting worse.

You underestimate the desire for human interaction. That and sex.
The one difference the internet provides over earlier times is that the socially maladjusted trolls get to interact with the rest of us, without being sent to the stocks. Man, I miss the stocks...

@Jimbo: I was just going to bed for the night, reading some DB to hasten the snooze process, and now I'm going to stay up till dawn researching your comment. Are you sure you got the name right for the "torture device" in "Barbarella"? Wikipedia - source of all truth - claims the device was called the "Excessive Machine." However, I distinctly remember the mad scientist shouting at Jane Fonda at the end of the scene: "You wicked, wicked girl! You've destroyed my Orgasmatron!"
If you had your own Endorphin Machine/Orgasmatron, who would you put in it?

Thanks for this DurbanBud,

It is the sort of rhetorical question I needed for this lazy Saturday.

While the escalation of the volume of information might be accompanied by a reduction in quality or discernible usability ...
I think I am inclined to support Jimbo in believing that human nature is slightly less brittle, or subject to the vagaries of the modern (technological) lifestyle.

Perhaps it is the marketing department that tells us the world is undergoing dramatic change with our shiny new machines???